Article and Art by Lila Garfield
I’m sorry that I didn’t give you a name and that as a result, I can’t address this letter. It feels wrong to write “dear chicken” or make a name for you now. I think what I wanted was to avoid having an emotional connection to you. As if to be nameless is to be independent.
You were one of the strong ones. You made it through the summer, you survived the raccoons and the coop that could never contain you. You witnessed all of the drama on the farm and the attempted coup. I know that it wasn’t easy living there. After a week, the milking goat started to develop an infection and it quickly spread to the other two, which I’m sure you were aware of but hopefully you never had to see it. They had bloody sores around their mouths and noses and they seemed to be in pain most of the time. We lost three ducks throughout the summer, each consumed to varying degrees, one left outside in the grass and two left inside the coop. In my head, I can hear you all screaming, maybe in warning or maybe in fear, and I imagine a sort of animated scribbled cloud of flapping wings and feathers and blood.
But still, you persevered. We brought you and five others home in the back of my car in pet carriers. We felt bad that you all were so squished for three hours but eventually, we got home and you were free at last! I think you had some trouble adjusting, and I should have tried harder to talk through that with you. But soon enough you all were laying every day, big brown and blue eggs, next to the white golf ball that marked the nest.
I wasn’t home as much as I would have liked. I feel so guilty that I didn’t care for you in the way that you deserved. I think tasks of care, which are your sole source of sustenance, can become mundane or inconsequential for humans. It would have been easy for me to fill up your food and water, collect your eggs, or give you treats, but it was easier to ignore you. This was something I considered, but never in a way that resulted in a change of behavior. Of course, the thought has more weight when I no longer have the option to improve our relationship.
In the summer the backyard glows golden green. In the spring it smells like lilacs and the lawn becomes a carpet of cottonwood. You saw the fall and the changing of the leaves, and you saw the months of freezing gray and snow. I wish you had made it.
I was flying back to Chicago when I found out that you had died. When we got home it was dark and cold, and we had to find the key to get inside. I immediately ran to the coop and shone a flashlight through your window. The others crowed at us, clearly bothered by our waking them up. Your body was stiff and lifeless, almost completely flat. I took you out of the coop and put you on a sheet of chicken wire framed by wood planks. My dad told me to put you in the garbage in the alley.
I know you know this, but in Judaism, there are specific rituals and traditions around death, rooted in the prioritization of respect. I told him that I couldn’t do that, that I would bury you the next day when it was light out. The ground was mostly frozen and covered in a blanket of snow, and it would remain that way, but at least tomorrow there would be light.
The next day I didn’t bury you, nor the next, nor the day after that. Centuries passed and you lay on a shelf in the garage. Every day there was a new excuse. And then I left home and went back to school.
I’m writing this because I want to apologize. I know that your death was not my fault, but I think I feel responsible because of my lack of compassion towards you when you were living. I’m sorry for not spending enough time with you, for treating your care like a chore, and for treating you as unimportant. Most of all, I want to apologize because five other chickens remain in the coop and I know that I won’t do any better with them.
Thank you for giving us fresh eggs and life to the farm and the garden. Thank you for understanding that my capacity and desires did not align with your needs.
Love,
Lila