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One of the six remaining geese from April’s hatch died today – photo above from happier times. She was the last gosling to hatch, needing a little assistance. From the beginning, she had what I can only describe as a “dreamy” look to her, as if she were always thinking of a far-off place. She grew normally and, until now, she’d been healthy and active like the others.
I’d hazard a guess that most farmers don’t spend too much time looking up at the sky and daydreaming – for obvious reasons: you look up and step into a hole or slip and end up covered in mud. Nobody wants that, and injuries aren’t funny when you have buckets to lift, you need to crouch and stoop, and there isn’t a “backup” to do the work for you. When I saw this morning sky, though, I had to stop pulling my cart loaded with feed buckets and rubber bowls – just for a moment – and take it in.
The soft, puffy-looking “dunes” invited pondering what lay beyond them: the ether. There was blue sky up there, and it peeked out from the cloud cover. I couldn’t help but wonder if, when sleep came, I could float up there, passing through the spun-cotton threshold into what’s above. Maybe I’ll find out.
What feelings or imaginings does this sky(ku) evoke in you?
Finding beauty in the ordinary isn’t difficult when Nature surrounds us with it. Walking across the front yard, the vibrant leaf litter jumped out at me – and this leaf, in particular. In the sunshine, it really was this incredible color (no filters applied). This – like all of the seasons – is an eye-popping time of year. Take time to appreciate it.
I’ve lived in homes in two different states where when I first moved in, I had views of a verdant pasture with beautiful horses. At each, however, the horses disappeared within a couple of years, the properties sold for “development”. Sad, the price of development; sadder still is what happens to the properties that were once so green and humming with life.
Though they weren’t mine and I never actually met them, I miss seeing the horses. I remember the mare that used to live in the former pasture above, running with her white mane flying. I think her name was “Ellie” – a name shared by my Muscovy drake, and when I’d call for him, she’d come galloping. It must have been a bit confusing to her – why was I always calling her name? She may not be there anymore, but she gallops still in my mind’s eye.
As green spaces are eaten up by “development”, I wonder where all the wild creatures that used to call those places home will go. Where can they go?
One of the ducklings died today. It was one of the last hatchers, the one with the most yolk that needed to be absorbed…which it did. Its navel had healed nicely and it seemed to be behaving normally until this morning, when it kept peeping, a sound very similar to a chick’s distress peeping. It wasn’t cold (it had easy access to the heat from “Mama Heating Pad”), its butt wasn’t pasty (I checked), and I saw it drinking. Its legs had grown stronger and it was much more coordinated today.
So why did it die? It’s a puzzle – there were no obvious signs of abnormality, it wasn’t injured, and even if it hadn’t eaten, its absorbed yolk could easily have sustained it through today. I know that I’m not going to have a definitive answer to this question, but I can’t help wondering if that duckling just wasn’t meant to live in this plane right now. I assisted it in hatching, and maybe it wasn’t meant to hatch at all…nonetheless, I don’t regret trying because the alternative (the duckling dying in the shell) would, at least to me, have been worse than it living briefly, interacting with other ducklings, dabbling in water, and being free of the confines of the shell. I’m just so sad that it never got a chance to take its first swim.
Wherever you are now, duckling, I hope you can swim, safely, to your heart’s content.
Another hatch has concluded, and there is a very gunky hatcher waiting to be cleaned and disinfected…but before I jump into the less glamorous part of incubating eggs, let’s review how this hatch went.