You’ll find tidbits and mild blogging about my life here.
It’s officially spooky season! If you’re looking for a Halloween costume for your pet, please consider this article from the National Library of Medicine, particularly the portion “Clothing and Its Effect on Thermoregulation”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8614365/
The TL;DR is that dogs and cats can be adversely affected by wearing clothes. Cute Halloween costumes can block or hinder thermoregulation. Textiles raise moisture levels, which can result in friction between the cloth and skin, aka discomfort and potential chafing and lesions. Chafing and lesions are unpleasant and uncomfortable. Disruptions to normal thermoregulation can have greater adverse health effects. Please be thoughtful and kind when including your pets in spooky season festivities!
If you absolutely have to have photos of your animals in costumes, consider only having the attire on them for a short period of time. Just because a costume can stay on for longer than a photoshoot, doesn’t mean it should stay on!
A few weeks ago, something attacked my pet chickens. It was during the day while they were free ranging. I had no idea that something had happened until a clump of feathers was found. Eventually, following a trail of feathers, I found one of the corpses of my girls. Two birds were lost that day, Röntgen and Runt. The body of the other was not recovered.
It was a traumatic experience for me. The chickens are pets, just like my dogs. Knowing that two of my sweet, docile hens met a painful and terrifying death at the hands of a raccoon or other predator makes my heart hurt. The world outside of their spacious coop and run proved to be too dangerous, so they needed to be supervised while free roaming or kept inside.
I was surprised when the three remaining hens, Enola Gay, Three Mile, and Fukuskima started rushing the door to their run whenever I went to it, trying to get out. Didn’t they know raccoons were out there? I also recall distinctly being confused when they exhibited this behavior the very next day after their sisters were killed. Especially Enola- the raccoon that killed Röntgen and Runt had managed to rip half of her tail feathers away, leaving a patch of exposed skin and two tail feathers that stick out at odd angles. I’m sure she was terrified and in pain during the attack. Shouldn’t she have an aversion or hesitancy towards the environment she was injured in?
Chickens don’t experience trauma and grief in the same way I do. My experience with losing a loved one was catastrophic. It made daily existence a chore. I often wondered how the world could just keep going when everything in my world felt like it was falling apart.
The hens have embraced the world moving onwards. There may be raccoons outside the coop, but there are also bugs to eat, dirt to scratch, and greenery to run around in. I know the hens are attached to each other. They’re flock animals. I don’t know to what (if any) degree the remaining hens notice the absence of their killed sisters. Enola explores the yard with her usual zeal, as if she has forgotten her assault. It’s important for me to recognize that their lack of grief and apprehension doesn’t diminish them. They can’t understand tragedy the way I do, but they understand the joy of chasing bugs in a way that I’m incapable of. They aren’t hindered by trauma in the same way I would be. What an unexpected show of resilience! What a way to live!
Observing and appreciating the hens for their differences has been a rewarding experience. They are more than just chickens. They are beings deserving of humanity. That is, they should be treated with kindness, allowed to live in dignified conditions, and appreciated for their way of being. They are different from me, but no less a child of the universe, to quote Max Ehrmann.
Assuming the chickens would have an emotional reaction similar to my own is anthropomorphizing. It causes me to misunderstand how they operate and what they experience. In checking my assumptions about them, I have an opportunity to know them more for what they are, instead of human centric preconceived notions of what they are.
Sarah Noodle 