A catastrophic event can happen rather quickly on a farm. The more animals you have, the more likely it will happen. Inevitably, this will lead to conversations about how something died, when it died, why it died…and in the case of my 2 year old, what we did with it when it died. Handling those conversations should come with an instruction manual. When dealing with little ones, some like it point blank, some will bawl their eyes out and some will mirror your reaction…”you’re good, so I’m good”.
I will be the first to admit that I have sugar coated more than one story as I felt some details were not necessary for their understanding. They still think the old rope horse went to a new home… and they have yet to notice the missing roosters.
Children are very impressionable. In fact, my 5 year old used to show any willing passerby the dead deer down the road. The image of the dead deer in the bar ditch was a normal topic of everyday discussion when he was 3. The fascination was endless.
Sure enough, my youngest now has the same fascination.
On any normal day, I can get a quick count on animals with one simple glance to the pasture. If I notice anything off, I grab my detective hat. Between my mother-in-law and I, we can tell you if the horse has a swollen eye, if a cow looks ‘off’, or if a chicken has moved in 6 hours. Believe it or not, the animals also have a way of letting you know.
On this particular day, I had not seen the new baby chick. While it’s momma was very diligent, something just didn’t feel right. I called my boys over to join in the search crew. We looked high and low while unearthing any possible hiding place. Mid search, I unexpectedly fell upon the water bowl where it appeared the chick had drowned. In shock, I blurted out “OH NO, the baby chick died!” My two year old who was following behind me then repeated…“he died!?” Before I could explain, he ran off to get his brother to notify him that “the baby chick died!”
Here they came running, with my 5 year old questioning out loud “THE BABY CHICK DIED?” and my 2 year old yelling back “ YES, the baby chick died!” Just as they arrived at the scene, they saw me gingerly toss it over the fence into the pasture weeds to get it away from the others. The 5 year old with wide eyes demanded I go retrieve the body so he could see if it possibly may come back to life. The 2 year old just kept motioning his hands like he was tossing the chick over the fence himself. He then kept correcting his brothers questioning as if he was helping him realize the harsh truth. Clearly, with the age difference, came a difference in grief.
Once we confirmed for the tenth time that the baby chick HAD in fact died, we moved onto the mourning stage. I was bummed, they were bummed, and we all showed frustration that it actually happened… despite our plans to raise the chick to be in our flock. It wasn’t what we expected. We didn’t want the unexpected but we couldn’t change it now, so we collectively decided to show some grief. Processing the unexpected is probably the most important part of the process and sometimes the hardest. The day will come when we can raise chicks again and in the meantime we can be thankful this wasn’t an older hen who was much more valuable.
When you have livestock of any kind, it quickly can become a large investment. With that investment comes responsibility. You have to know when to cut your losses and when to move on. We quickly learned that with the loss of an animal came a loss of income or an asset to the farm. No matter how you look at it, it can be hard to stomach. I have seen ranchers get visibly distraught when they lose a calf as it effects their bottom line. I know for me, all of my animals are well taken care of and each of them has quite a bit of money, feed, time and love invested.
My boys only shared in the smallest part of this lesson, but the best part was, we arrived at the same conclusion:
Yes, it was sad. Yes, it happened. Yes, it’s okay to move on…because we are going to be okay.
A big life lesson over a small little creature.