You may remember that I wrote that we were waiting for Nora to die.
She died today.
For the last 3 weeks she has been utterly detemined not to go. Each day she ate the tiniest amount, drank the tiniest amount, and insisted on going outside and sitting down, or having a quick walk.
Her foray into the the nestbox in the run (see Waiting, back in July) ended with the girls attacking her and me rescuing her. She tried again a week ago, with a worse result. Hens are just nasty beasts sometimes.
Every morning I expected to find her gone, but she'd be sitting in the cratewaiting for me to put her outside.
A few days ago, I sectioned off the Fruit Cage part of the run, so she could stay in there. I put a nest box underneath the Cube, and she "overnighted" there. She's come inside every night since, but has been happy spending the hottest part of the day in the cool shade of the enormous Jostaberry.
Every day, she looked determined to live. She even started to try and eat the odd bit of slightly more substantial food (more substatial than lettuce, tomato, cucumber). I even kidded myself that she might turn the corner. She might eat enough to actually start to reverse her decline. She might be one of those unicorm chickens that reaches the age of 14.
On Tuesday, 2 days ago, she was sitting near the netting. She's sat there most days, watching the rest of the flock and chatting with some of them. Yesterday, they attacked her through the netting. All of them. It was like a horror film.
I saved her, cleaned her up, and prepared something else for her to eat. She seemed her usual defiant self the following morning. She went out, ate some grass (another improvement), tootled around. Had a bit of real food..... and then she just lay down and went to sleep. I don't mean that as a euphemism for dying, I mean, she went to sleep.
I lay on the grass beside her, stroking her. I thought that she would die quietly and peacefully, and quickly. I cried, a lot.
She didn't.
She was still sleeping in the evening, so I brought her inside. She was obviously dying, and it seemed peaceful, so I decided (perghaos wrongly) to let her slip away overnight,=.
She didn't.
This morning we agreed that it would be best if we helped her along, so DH kindly did the deed.
..........................
Nora was an absolutely beautiful girl. Her Mum was either Rose or Ruby, the two Welsh Black girls we got from Castle Farm many years ago. Her Dad was Roo, our first home hatched boy.
She was an amazing mix of the two. She had brown/black feathers, where the black shimmered an irridescent green.
She outlived her twin, Batty, who died exactly 4 years ago. It was often hard to tell them apart. In truth, Nora was a bit darker than Batty. But, like many of the allotment pairs, they were known by their pairname "Nora Batty" .
She also outlied her daughter/niece, Big Bird (who died earlier this year), and her daughterBarbara who looked very much like her Mum. Barbara died just before lockdown.
She lost the sight in one eye years ago, but it didn't stop her.
When she came here, after four girls were stolen from our allotment at the beginning of the first Lockdown, I was worried that she wouldn't be able to cope with the change. She amazed me by being a feisty lady. She got ito full on flying kick fights, many of which she won.
She was a friendly girl, that came from her Dad's side. Happy to be handled, happy to be stroked, happy to eat from my hand. She was heavy, relatively placid, and a real joy to have in the garden.
Who knows. She might have survived longer if she hadn't had the stress of moving, and then of integrating into one big flock. It's also possible that the move kept her fit and thjriving for longer - access to grass every day, all day; no boys; aways new stuff going on.
I'm happy that I got to spend so much time with her over the last 18 months., and I think she had a good life.
