The Dead of Winter

It's been quite a month here on We Are One Farm. January weather has not been too severe, still more mild than not, some real snow finally, and a few days of quite cold, -15 C with windchill. Still that's a far cry from the "good ‘ol days" where we always seemed to have a good, solid two-week stretch where the wind chill would get down to -20 or -25C. I am not missing that!

There have been at least three days where the sun has warmed things up so much that a bunch of honey bees vacated their hive and dropped dead on the snow. It's normal, kind of a clearing out of the old, bringing to mind the Monty Python film, "The Holy Grail", where the fellow pushes his cart through the village during the Plague, calling, "Bring out yer dead!" One day I picked up a couple of the bees who were flailing their little legs on the snow and tried to put them back on the wee ledge at the hive opening, but they promptly rolled or crawled to the edge and fell off onto the snow below again. I repeated this futile gesture several times to no avail. Must have been "a good day to die".

Here, in the dead of winter, there have been some other casualties actually. Two of our sweet Barred Rock hens died, inexplicably, 2 weeks apart. Chickens expiring from time to time is not that unusual, sometimes they are victims of a fall, more often perhaps an infection of some kind, but we can usually detect the latter, seeing some signs of weakness or sleepiness or else greenish poop in the weeks before. If we can we then take the ill chicken out of the coop and try to medicate it with antibiotics, but often it is too late by the time symptoms are obvious.

But these two deaths were odd. Each time we discovered the hen, stiff as a board, simply lying in it's laying box, when the morning before she had been up running around and acting just like all the other hens. An unfortunate mystery. We are always sad to lose our sweet hens.

On the upside, this was also the month when, to my delight, one morning I went in to the coop to retrieve eggs and discovered a tiny perfect egg, about half the size of the other eggs, obviously the first one laid by one of the two "baby" black hens who were themselves only hatched in September! They have continued to produce regularly. These must be what are marketed as "peewee" eggs that I see from time to time at a local independent grocer.

There was a potentially fatal incident with Angus at the beginning of the month that kind of knocked the stuffing out of me. We'd been out for our usual romp through the woods, me sticking to the trail and Angus doing his usual zig zag back and forth across it, easily tripling the distance I travelled in a straight line. There are a LOT of smells out there of course, along with a multitude of hare and fox tracks, and one of them caught his Beagle-like nose and led him off across the woods, indifferent to my calls.

It happens, more often than I'd like, but normally he's back in 20 minutes or less. So I continued back to the house, calling along the way, then finally went in and got the boots and coat off and went about my tasks. Normally I would stick my head out the door every few minutes and yell, "ANGUS!! COME!!" and go back in. This time I "hollered" out the upstairs window that overlooks the back field and woods beyond, so my voice would carry far. I paused to listen to see if I could hear him yipping in pursuit of a hare but instead I heard a plaintive bark and whine in response to my call. Angus never responds vocally to my calls, he just shows up eventually. I called again and got the same. Something was wrong.

Worried, I raced down the two flights of stairs to the basement, bundled up in layers and boots again and flew out the door, stopping frequently to call for a response as I could not hear him over the crunch of my boots on the snow and branches. His yelps led me through thick forest with no trail downhill to the east, across the neighbouring land, finally to a stream at the bottom across which I could see his wagging tail. He looked fine!

I said, "What's the matter Angus, you don't want to cross a little stream??" And then I noticed that he couldn't, he was caught by something, I thought it was an old barbed fence wire caught in his collar.

I said, "Stay buddy, I'm coming!" and clambered over the rocks in the stream. I was SO happy to see him until I saw that it was not a fence wire he was caught on. His neck was in a snare! And each tug he made was pulling it tighter.

I had never seen a snare before, didn't know how they worked, but as I had no tools with me I was in a panic. My first apparent option was to unwrap the old stiff wire that was attaching the snare to the tree, which I did, fingers fumbling in the cold and my heart racing both from fear and from the run through the woods. I still didn't know how the snare worked and thought at least if I could get Angus unhooked from the tree I could get him back to the house with the snare still around his neck and then cut it.

There was no room to get a finger between his neck and the wire although Angus was still breathing alright at that point. Then I saw the simple clasp with two holes where the cable looped through and back. I was able to get just enough slack to shift it and loosen the cable. He was free! I hugged him and cried with relief.

I then led him back to the house, climbing through what seemed to be a much denser, darker and more obstructed landscape than the one I had run through on my way down. Going back I must have found a different route...well, there was no "route", but the way was clogged with dead, fallen trees blocking us at every turn, forcing us to climb, over and under and around, until we finally emerged, tired from the stress and uphill trek, in our own back field.

All the while Angus seemed oblivious to the danger he had faced, a few more tugs or any panic and he would have been choked. But no, I had to keep reining him in on the way home, pulling him back from smelling every track and mark on the way.

Now's the dilemma of keeping him safe. It is so nice for him to have the freedom to roam the property and to get a good run in, but not when it leads him beyond our borders. He has been off the leash often since then but has been quite obstinate lately, one day not returning for almost two hours then coming back looking decidedly "guilty". So the past few days he's been back on the leash, a challenge for both of us as he wants to GO and needs the exercise of running, but there's no way in the icy snow on the trail that I can get up enough speed and sure footing to give him a brisk pace.

And despite the shock of that day's events with Angus, things actually got worse when our sweet cat Smudge failed to return at suppertime. He had never been out over night before nor did we want him to be, so at 10 pm we were out, flashlights in hand, Angus on a leash, calling and searcing the field and driveways and road in newly falling snow. Any trails he might have made that day were quickly being covered up. That was on January 6, over three weeks ago, and we haven't seen him since.

It has been a sad time for me, especially not knowing if he has been suffering somewhere. He could have been taken by an eagle or coyote, possibly a fox as there are many tracks around lately. Or hit by a car. Since I placed an ad in the local paper I've had three calls, one from a woman who had a very similar cat hanging around her back yard, but it was not Smudge. The second call was about a dead black and white cat seen on the roadside not far from here. Alas it was not Smudge either and brought mixed feelings, first that someone else was suffering a loss that day, second, relief that it was not Smudge and third, that discomfort of still not knowing. And it was a horrible sight.

The most recent call came the night before last, minutes before midnight as we were crawling into bed. The people were so kind, they had seen a cat seeming to fit the description for several nights, coming to their porch and staying to eat and they said he was there just then as they called and we could come over to check it out. It was a bit of a roundabout drive, but perhaps not too distant if Smudge had made a big trek across country through the forest, poerhaps being chased by something. So we got dressed again, and left just after midnight, flashlight and a bowl of smelly cat food in hand. We got our hopes up, but again, it was not Smudgie.

It is however heartening to know there are people who care enough, not even knowing you, to call with leads regarding your missing pet. And then stay up past midnight to meet you and to help you out. The kindness of strangers.

From among my Soul Coaching® community I also had an offer of assistance, this one from an "animal communicator" who spoke with me by phone to help me connect with Smudge in spirit, living or dead. As far as she could tell, he was still alive but trapped somewhere. The best guess from the images she was receiving was the old barn on the hill at the strawberry farm across the road from us. I called the owners and checked it out, but no luck. And it was wide open, many exits easily available. I even went up in the loft in case he had climbed high and couldn't get down, but there was no sign of him. There were, however, other animal tracks in and out of the building into the woods.

So, we keep the porch light on at night and hold out a faint hope that he did get stuck somewhere but that there is an ample supply of mice to eat and hay to stay warm in and that at some point he might make it back home to us. Another "nor-easter" is on the way, promising 20-30 centimeters of snow tomorrow, just in time for Groundhog Day.  Stay safe, Smudge, if you're still out there, stay safe.