The Joy and the Sadness of Keeping Pets

It all started with one tiny, half grown rooster that I happened to come across one day in a muddy yard where my (then) boyfriend was looking at a car to buy. I wandered around by myself, to see all the animals - there were geese and muscovy ducks, large chickens and bantams. Some of the animals were kept inside large fenced areas, one little flock of bantams wandered freely through the garden. I spied a large cage, and went to look at what might be inside. There were four rabbits, a small group of quails, and Rover - the rooster who would come home with me that day. He was destined for the soup pot. I saved him.

My boyfriend and I lived in a 107 year old house in a tiny village by the sea. The yard is 1/3 acre; plenty of room for my garden beds, and the large fenced area where I kept two pet rabbits - Louie; a peach coloured lop, and Margie, a white angora. Rover moved into the yard with them. The three formed a strong bond, playing tag, stealing each other's food, napping together in a heap in the sun. There was a regular routine each morning when I brought the rabbits their breakfast. I would open their cage, pour the greens and raisins and bread crumbs onto their plate, and pet them while they ate. Rover, meanwhile, yelled at me from his batchelor quarters in the dog house next to the rabbit cage. He knew I'd brought food, and he wanted his share. In fact he wanted it all. For this reason, I let the rabbits eat their fill before I let the pesky chicken out of his house.

Once the bunnies had eaten all they wanted, they leaped from the cage. Full of pent up energy, their jump took them halfway across the yard. I watched them run and jump and spin circles around each other. They were in the process of digging a long tunnel and filling it with straw that they gathered from the pile I left for them under their cage. Margie, especially wanted to make an underground nest. She didn't know that Louie was neutered, she wanted to raise a family. Louie didn't know he was neutered, he loved Margie every way he knew how. Together they carried mouthfulls of straw down into the tunnel and pressed it into place.

As I stood watching the rabbits and laughing at their antics, Rover glared through his mesh covered window and screamed at all of us. I let him out, and he would give me a piece of his mind before barging over to the rabbit cage. One flap of his wings and he was inside, so intent on finding that plate of food, he often rushed right past it to the far end of the cage. Turning, he careened back to the bedroom area and pounced on the plate. Food flew in all directions as he pecked up his favourite bits. He continued to grumble as he ate, pausing every so often to aim a withering look in my direction before resuming his feast. Then he leapt down to the ground, and proceeded to chase the rabbits. Or the rabbits chased him, it was difficult to tell. Round and round the dog house, changing direction when the other wasn't looking, and colliding or leaping over the other's back. Later, as the afternoon sun streamed into their yard, the rabbits would lay in a little hollow they had made, their bodies pressed together. Rover would lie against them, stretching out his legs and closing his eyes. It was an idealic life for all of them.

One awful Easter Sunday morning, my boyfriend ran into the bedroom where I was still asleep, and roared "The Rabbits Are Dead!" He was never one for sensitivity. I ran out in my night gown. First thing I saw was the rabbit cage, its door torn off its hinges, the heavy metal roof thrown to the ground. The gate to their yard was still fastened. I yanked it open and ran in. There was Louie, laying dead on his side, facing his beloved Margie who lay dead near the entrance to their tunnel. She had obviously tried to escape down into the tunnel, but it was blocked by their food dish, placed precisely over the hole. Neither rabbit had any wounds that I could see, they were simply dead. They had been run to death by some predator that couldn't be bothered to eat them. Likely a neighbour's well fed, pet dog. I carried Margie over to lie beside Louie, and opened Rover's door. He was very quiet. He went over to his friends and sat down beside their bodies. All afternoon he stayed in place, as though waiting for them to wake up.

I dug a grave beneath a lovely arbutus tree, found a large bag, and re entered the animal yard. I said my goodbyes to both of them, and tucked them together into the bag. They were large rabbits - together they must have weighed 50 pounds. Carrying them to their grave, I felt the softness of their bodies, the heavy weight of them that had given me such a feeling of maternal satisfaction when they were alive. I buried them together, and placed a marker on their resting place. Rover watched from his yard. He looked very small.

I tried to think of a way to ease Rover's loneliness. I placed a toy chicken in the yard, but he rushed up and knocked it over. I picked apple leaves and clover for him, and watched while he ate. He wandered through his joyless days. When the sun began to set he would enter his doghouse and wait for me to close his door.

I decided to find him a wife. A neighbour kept bantams. I went up and knocked on her door - would she sell me one of her hens? The timing was perfect, she had one extra hen that she would part with. She wouldn't take money for her. She went to her chicken run and lifted a pretty little bantam hen from a shelf, with feathers a beautiful earthy shade. Various tints and hues gave her a speckled appearance. I quickly tucked her into my jacket and kissed her tiny head to calm her. Then I hurried home.

I wasn't sure how to introduce Irma to her new husband. I simply put her into the yard with him, and watched to see what they would do. Rover was shy, and obviously in love. He watched her tentative inspection of the yard. I left them to become aquainted in privacy. By the end of the day, they were settled into married life. Rover was already protective, chasing out the blue jays that flew into their yard and strayed too close to his bride. Irma found the hollow that the rabbits had made. She rested in its very center, enjoying the warm sun on her back. In the evening, Rover escorted her to the dog house, then stood back to allow her to enter before following her in. The morning after their first night together, Rover was back to his old self, calling through the window to be allowed out, stamping his feet, brimming with life that was his to enjoy again. His dark days were over.

One month later, I woke up at dawn to a faint screaming. I leapt out of bed and ran through the house, following the sound as it grew louder. The screams were coming from the animal yard. I ran out. Rover was screaming, running for his life, inches away from the snapping jaws of a huge wolf/dog mix I recognised as a neighbour's pet. I wrenched open the gate and ran toward the dog, screaming and waving my arms. It paid no attention. I lunged for the dog's body and it suddenly changed course, racing past me and out the gate. Rover grabbed the opportunity to squeeze himself into a narrow space between the rabbit cage and the fence. His feathers were soaked, as though he'd already been inside the dog's mouth. As though the dog had been toying with him, the way he'd (surely it was the same animal) toyed with my rabbits until they died. The roof of the dog house had been torn off, and several shingles placed neatly over the entrance to the rabbit tunnel. Irma was inside the doghouse, alive, but very frightened. Rover had bravely distracted the wolf to save his wife. I lifted him out from his hiding place and dried him off, then placed him in the ruins of his house beside Irma.

An additional roll of chicken wire raised the height of the fence another two feet, topped by a string of barbed wire. Because of its size, and several trees growing in the yard, I didn't see the feasability of roofing over the yard, but the fence was seven feet high now, and the chicken's flight feathers were clipped. The doghouse was given a new, stronger roof, Rover and Irma recovered from their fright and settled back into their daily routine.

One day Irma laid her first egg. Soon she had a clutch, and couldn't be persuaded to leave it. I decided to let the eggs hatch. Rover and Irma were going to raise a family. I set to work, pinning a roll of plastic along the bottom edge of the chicken wire fence to keep the chicks from escaping through the holes. One morning, several weeks later, the eggs hatched. There were five chicks altogether, peeking at me from the safety of their mother's feathers. So tiny, all of them would have fit in my palm at once. As Irma clucked and crooned to her children, Rover stood just ouside the door and crowed his success.

All that spring and summer, the little chicks learned their lessons. Rover and Irma were attentive parents. They patiently taught their children where to find the best bugs, how to scratch with one foot, then the other, how to take a dust bath. Halfway through the day, Irma would settle down on the ground, and the chicks would run to her, disappearing underneath her warm feathers, occasionally poking out their head, then darting back inside. One of the chicks seemed to prefer Rover, and would try to sneak in under Rover's feathers whenever he lay down. Rover was a good father, but the idea of mothering a chick flew in the face of everything he had been taught about being a manly rooster. He would give a shout, and drag the poor little chick out from under him. I realised, this chick was likely a male. My worst fear - I knew I couldn't keep two roosters. They would fight. When the chick grew up, I would have to find a new home for him. As I watched the little rooster mature, I mourned him. I couldn't help the feeling that he would come to a bad end.

That fall, the chicks were nearly full grown. They were a beautiful flock; two were speckled brown like their mother, a third was a darker shade of chocolate, another was a surprising, very pretty canary yellow, and the little rooster was red like his dad. Each evening, as the late summer sun tinted the sky pink, and the tall evergreen trees bordering my property cast long shadows across the yard, the little bantam family filed into their house and pressed together into their straw bed. I would come out, let myself into their yard and shut their door against the night. I always stood for a few moments, listening to their sleepy crooning as they drifted off into dreams.

It seems to me that animal tales often end sadly. The best we can hope is that the animal lives a long, happy life, and dies peacefully with its loved ones nearby. It has not been so with my bantam flock. The little rooster and one of his sisters were the first. One day, the neighbour who'd so kindly given Irma to me, dropped by to ask if I had a rooster she could take. She wanted one to fertilize eggs. She would not eat him, she promised. In fact, she would like to take a hen as well, as she was wanting a full flock. I trusted her, and sadly packed up the little rooster and one of the light brown hens, carried them up the hill and said goodbye. I begged the neighbour to call me if she ever changed her mind and didn't want the chickens anymore. Rather than kill them, I said, please, let me know and I'll take them back. I told her I would pay. I couldn't stop the feeling that something was horribly wrong here.

A few weeks later, I was told she had killed the rooster, along with several others. They made too much noise, she said. And they made very good soup.

I took to sneaking up to the fence dividing her yard from my own, and trying to catch a glimpse of the little hen I'd given her. She often let her flock wander freely around the yard, I hoped to lure my hen away. Though the little hen never came close enough, I did see her occasionally. She seemed quite content, dwarfed by her full sized companions, she showed not the slightest intimidation. I relaxed a little - maybe she, at least, was safe from the axe. Then the neighbour moved away, taking the chickens with her. I decided I would never again let another egg hatch. I wouldn't take a chance that one of the chicks might be a boy, and share Roger's awful fate.

That Christmas, a storm blew up. The trees danced in the gusting wind, hard, partly frozen rain hailed down. One evening as the sun was setting, a friendly dog happened to run through the yard in play, just as the chickens were heading for bed. All of them flew up into the air, carried by the wind higher and higher into the trees and onto the roof of the house. I leaned a ladder against a tree, reached for the nearest hen and lifted her down, placing her safely in the doghouse. The rooster also was recovered, and joined his daughter. I heard a flutter of wings in the dark, and turned in time to see one of the hens had launched herself from the house roof, and down into the the thick tangled vines on the ground. Using my flashlight, I finally found her crouching there in terror, and placed her with her family. All the chickens were safe, except one. The hen with her mother's colouration and pattern. Henrietta had flown high into a tree near the road. I'd seen her sailing up on a draft of wind.

She stayed in the tree for three days, as the wind tore at the branches and sent her further in toward the trunk. Using binoculars, I could see her up there. She was a tiny speck hundreds of feet from the ground. Then she was gone. I never saw her again.

And so it was a family of four. Another year passed uneventfully. The chickens enjoyed a routine life, while inside my own house, things were falling apart. After all our years together, I'd finally reached a point where I understood I should have left my boyfriend a long time before. I was moving toward a conclusion of some kind. I sensed I would be leaving that home, but what to do with the chickens? I didn't know if he would care for them after I left. I didn't want to seperate them, or to cause their deaths if I gave them to someone without their best interest at heart.

Then I noticed a strange growth on the legs of one of the hens. She grew lame, and often seemed to be drifting. I bought medicine for her, and gave it to all the flock in their drinking water. I caught the lame hen and soaked her legs in a bowl of herbal water, holding her there and stroking her until she relaxed into the bath. She began to heal. She no longer needed the healing baths, though the other medication continued. She could walk again almost normally. Then things came to a boil within my own house and I had to leave right away. There was no more time. He promised to care for the flock, and to keep on with the medication - he's always treated animals better than he treated me, and so I decided to trust him. I moved out, leaving my sad little flock behind.

Two weeks later, the hen was dead. Two weeks after that, the rooster died. Today, I received an email from my ex, telling me the pretty yellow hen is dead now too. Irma is alone.

I don't believe he's killed them. For all his psychotic tendencies, I don't think he would do that. I don't want to believe it, though I have a shade of doubt. I don't know. I feel guilty. I feel like a bad mother. I feel like an animal abuser because I left them with someone who knows how to push my buttons and is very, very angry with me.

All I know is that Irma is alone. I must do something for her, but I don't have a clue.