And then there were 5...

Every night before BCFjr goes to sleep, we pray for "no nightmares and keep the chickens alive". I go through the exercise with little thought to "what if..." Well, today, "what if..." happened. Here, in an unnamed Southern Ontario town with the most humidity in Canada, we are, as much of North America is, experiencing record-breaking high temps. It got hot, followed by real hot, followed by stinkin' hot...Now, chickens don't fare well in heat. They don't sweat and like dogs and cats (fellow non-sweaters) they pant to stay cool. They have been panting a lot! Compound this with the fact that our coop is in the only sunny spot in our backyard and the fact that I have weaned myself off of letting them go free range. The reason for the latter is that I decided that mulch belongs IN the garden and not ON the grass and that hostas look so much prettier when they are not chewed down to the nub. Can you hear the slight guilt in my voice? Yes, it is real And as BCFjr has not fallen far from this tree, he is taking blame too. Hours before finding our fated fowl, he confessed that he threw dirt on her. I assured him that God made dirt and dirt don't hurt. So hours after the "dirt incident", the day following the hottest on record, on hen simply lay down and breathed her last. We were all saddened by this, but not as much as jr. He took it hard and became so burdened with the fact that death could come a knockin' on any other hen's door. That night, as I prayed the standard prayer, I caught myself before kicking into autopilot. I acknowledged that God had let a chicken die, and that we didn't understand, but we would trust him and trust him to care for the rest. That seemed to make sense to all of us. I hope it sticks.