Mother Hen

My parents were gone for the week, so the animals had become solely my responsibility.  Juggling two cumbersome calf bottles, I trudged through the deep, smelly mud of the pasture and into the barn with my younger sister at my heels.  The calves, one grey and one black, ran to us and began to down the warm milk with too much gusto for such a hot day.  I loved the calves, but feeding them tended to be annoying since their sticky slobber usually got all over my hands and arms.  After the calves had their fill, my sister and I turned our attention to the chickens.  There were to large, square cages in one of the horse stalls.  Each was about chest deep and one arm's length in width.  One held a hen and three lively, little chicks that ran around pecking at the flies that flew about them.  I could see a hen in the other cage, but she was sitting on her nest.  I could see but one chick with her, although my father had told me he placed two others in the cage on the previous day.  As I approached the cage, the hen stood and began to run in circles, stirring up the straw that littered the floor.  What I saw horrified me.  The other two chicks were dead.  One was still in the nest while the other was beside the nest.  They had not been hatched long when they died because their damp feathers still clung closely to their little bodies.  My stomach turned as the mother hen and her living offspring trampled carelessly over the dead babies as if they were not nor had ever been anything at all.  I knew I had to do something about the deceased chicks, so I turned to my sister who stared sadly back at me.  I stepped into the tack room and found a pair of gloves.  As my sister held back the hen, I reached in and picked up the chick that lay beside the nest.  Cradling it gently in my gloved hand, I walked out of the barn and into the pasture.  My father had warned me that I might encounter this particular situation and had told me what to do with "the dead ones." His method of disposal seemed so heartless... so cruel.  But I didn't know what else to do.  Burying the poor things wasn't an option.  My family would make fun of me mercilessly for that.  "It's just a stupid chicken," they would say, "it doesn't matter."  It matters to me.  I looked down at the lifeless creature in my hand.  I felt tears beginning to sting my eyes, but I pushed them back, remembering the looks of disapproval my family would give me.  I had to do as I was told.  Mustering my courage, if that's what it's even called, I drew back my arm and flung the pitiful carcass across the pasture.  I watched as its limp little body bounced against the soft ground.  I literally choked at the sight.  I felt so cruel.  In a shocked daze, I returned to the barn to get the second dead chick.  This time, as soon as I launched its body into the air, I turned around.  I could not bring myself to watch this one hit the ground too.  After a second, my sister came outside of the barn and we went back to the house.  That was it.  I know now that I should have gone with my first feelings and buried the poor things.  At least then I would have felt better about it and the memory of it would not still be with me.