RIP to one of our four chickens, Fremont, a black Jersey Giant, who passed away some time in the last 24 hours and whom I found this afternoon lying motionless under a pile of pine shavings after the other three hens came out to harass me for daring to give them snacks.
You were a good hen, and we have no idea why you died, and we're hoping it was precisely the randomness everyone told me chicken death incorporated rather than something that threatens the other three who don't seem to care.
We were so thoroughly warned that Chickens Just Die that we have been braced for random chicken death for the 19 months or so that we have had the four of you, and so your sudden and random death feels like both a terrible horror movie false-happy-ending confirmation after a year and a half of no real worries and also kind of strange relief that, yes, in fact, this whole thing is as fraught as everyone said and we don't have to keep up a magical streak of being unaffected.