Ode to Rhoda

My Little Red Hen

by Jacquelyn Jardine Meyers

Three years ago, around March 17th, 2019, we brought home our little Rhoda Roo.  She was a pretty little chick, our first Rhode Island Red.  Just a few days freshly hatched from the egg, we also brought home with her, a Delaware breed, who would become our Goosie Dellaroo.  They were two chickie peas in a pod, and they grew and grew.  Scratching and clucking, they did everything together.  

Rhoda would lay her first little egg around August of that same year.

In the summer of 2020, Brig and I took a trip to Yellowstone National Park for Brig’s first visit, and I’d not been there since I was a teenager.  Under the loving watch of another, and we cast no fault, Rhoda’s sister Goosie passed away from an unknown cause while we were gone on that trip.  Rhoda was sad, but brave with Goosie now gone, and soon she would be dealing with a battle against mites, but she would be a gallant little hen, peaceful and resolute, no matter what she had to be a good sport about.  At the same time she’d had all this loss and was going through something the rest of us wouldn’t be able to understand, she gained a new friend in our daughter, Natalie, who had experienced great loss in her own life, and who was also battling serious health issues most others wouldn’t cognize and empathize with.  The two became comrades against the hardships of life.  Natalie would come visit Rhoda, and the two would bond over circumstances just the two of them could best surmise.

Rhoda and I had already been through a lot together.  The loss of our Goosie, and then her bout with mites.  There she was, half featherless between the pests that had attacked her, and her own natural molting process, yet she kept cheerfully greeting me each day when I came out to feed her and give her treats.  We both worked hard to fight these pests, that likely came from the wild sparrows that come daily to share her food.  We fought and fought, and even Natalie had been working to help energetically and by searching the web for solutions, then finally I said a very specific and special prayer for Rhoda’s condition, and her health made a dramatic turn for the win.  

It is now the summer of 2021.  A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that she was seeming a little depressed.  I wondered if it was because we’d had to put her back in her run for the spring because the garden was coming up, and wouldn’t survive her digging.  But then I noticed that her backside was very dirty, which it never had been before, and after more investigation, realized she was suffering from some diarrhea.  I’d given her a lot of peas for treats, and maybe it had been too much.  So I quit with that.  But she didn’t seem to be getting any better.  Brig had churned up the run a couple of times with the tiller, so that should have been a healthful move on her behalf.  Still no improvement.  Her crown fell, her demeanor turned to a dreary gaze.  This wasn’t the cheerful little red hen that we knew.  So, I looked up all the causes for her demise, and found a myriad of possibilities for her symptoms.  I was committed to investigating, though life had gotten quite busy as social things opened up and the garden and now three new baby chicks needed constant attention.

I put garlic in her feed, which had always worked for my sick chickens in the past, though I’d only dealt with sickness once or twice in my seven-year chicken career—each time before, we had easily won.  This time, that didn’t seem to do the trick, so I added ACV to her water.  Still no change for the better.  I’d had to make the new baby chicks my priority, and other things had come upon my life to crowd in, as I was working to support some important situations for my aging mother, who is at some distance from me, so the traveling back and forth takes quite a bit of my time and resources, but is a very important priority to me.  I wondered if Rhoda had felt neglected, despite my efforts for her.  I wondered if she had felt she was no longer useful because she wasn’t laying her eggs anymore, and knew she saw the new little chicks, and wondered if this only added to her feelings of uselessness.  I’ve had more than one man’s man come around here and chuckle at my attentive consideration of the psychological well-being of my feathered friends.  “It’s just a chicken”, one of our hunter friends said.  But to me it is Life, a creation of God.  A Life with thoughts and feelings and a darling personality.  I completely respect that.  

With the busy week, I’d not seen her much the day before.  Brig had been working all day in the yard, and said he’d just seen her come out once.  So when my other responsibilities calmed down, I went to check on her again, and she was quite despondent, sitting there in her coop in the middle of the day, completely out of character.  She was facing the back wall and breathing laboriously.  Her head down—I’d never seen her or any of my other chickens like this before.  I said hello to her, and “I love you, little birdie”, but she seemed too overburdened to respond, so I hoped with encouragement as I said to her, “I’m going to go get something to help you”.  I had one more idea—I could try an anti-parasitic.  I had considered that if this didn’t work, I could take her to the vet, and if she was on her way out, he could help her not have to suffer so much.  It only took five minutes for me to get the deworming syrup diluted and into a syringe to administer to her.  I came back out, and as I opened the coop door, I was heavily distressed to find that she had indeed worked to respond to my voice.  She had finally turned around to face me, and used her last ounce of strength to acknowledge those efforts, then her little completely exhausted body collapsed with her very last breath.  The sight was entirely troubling, and I came out from the coop to look for my husband, who was, in perfect timing, coming to the back from around the side of the house.  He saw the great upset on my face, my palms against my forehead wondering what else I could have done for her, and came right to me and put his arms around me while I cried and sobbed and expressed my tremendous regret that I had failed her, and my thorough heartache that she had met such an undeserved end.  

My heart was so sad to see this for her.  She didn’t deserve to suffer.  I had had such great plans for her, that would have been fulfilled within the next week—to take her to a mountain paradise, where she might find other friends, and live out her life with plentiful bugs and fresh greens galore.  It felt so unfair.  It’s one thing for humans to learn and grow from their suffering, but my belief system holds no purpose in what appears to be the useless suffering of any animal.  I already feel she has forgiven me if I made a mistake, because I know she knows how much I loved and honored her life, and how much I did treat her as much like royalty as my means made able.

I will never forget how she would talk and answer back to me when I’d come out to find her and feed her, or work in the garden.  It often sounded like she was saying, “Mom?” in chickenese, and she always seemed to thank me for her dinner or her treats with a sweet little cluck as she ate away.  If her water had run dry, or I’d had a busy day and she’d not gotten her treats, she might scold me a little.  That’s what little red hens do.  And when you’re a mini-farmer like myself, when your little red hen loses her best friend, and winter comes, you insist that your husband have no issue with her having the whole backyard to herself—despite a little poop on the deck, because you don’t leave animals to be alone and lonesome.  I know she still missed her Goosie, but she was a good sport about every single thing.  She knew Natalie’s voice and could hear her when she came to visit in the house, and she’d call for her to come out and see her.  We were blessed to know her, and blessed much by her.

As she aged, she surprised me last fall, to still be laying five eggs a week, while going into her third year.  This was highly unusual. I considered she was taking her responsibilities to serve us very seriously, and was amazed by her.  But as the weeks went on, I noticed some signs of strain and stress for her to keep laying all these eggs.  I suspected she might be feeling old and tired, so I went out one day, and after she’d laid an egg in her brooder, looked her in the eye, and said something to the effect: “You know, Rhoda, my dear, you have served us well.  You have taken on the responsibility to help feed the household even after your best friend and helper passed away.  If you are tired, and want to rest, you can rest.”  There was never one more egg laid for us after that.  It was most amazing.  She’d gone from laying five eggs a week, to not a one for most of another whole year until her seemingly untimely death.  Unheard of.  What service.  What dedicated devotion to her caretakers.  And what evidence that she hears and knows.  Ever the more reason she deserved a paradise end, instead of the gravely disappointing end filled with affliction and signs of despair.  But what an exact example this was to the fact that hard things happen to good people (chickens, Life), and we cannot necessarily judge that through any fault of their own a distressing trauma befell them.  

Thank you for your lessons, little bird.  Thank you for your service.  Thank you for the joy you were, and your memories still are.  Thank you for your love.  Little Red Hen who sat under the stairs to be close to our flock during long winter days, or came up and pecked on the sliding glass door whenever she was ready for more treats.  

So, as I hold fast to the joy that she was, the courage she held, the faithfulness she offered, I hold fast even more to the joy that is ahead for her, and the joy that is ahead in life for you and for me.  I love you, Rhoda, my little red hen.