Tira

A few weeks ago a fox took another of our chickens. This time I actually saw the fox coming out of the woods in broad daylight, right at the edge of our driveway, on the tails of two chickens who made it back safely. I yelled and it turned around reluctantly, but managed to find Tira (short for Tiramisu, the dessert, but I like Cale’s spelling better – see pic below) further out in the woods.

Of our original six chicks, two were Isa Browns, both taken by a fox (not sure if it was the same fox). The first one we lost earlier in the summer, and while it was upsetting, it was nowhere near as sad as losing Tira, probably because she was younger, hadn’t started laying eggs, and we weren’t as attached to her. We hadn’t even named her yet because we couldn’t tell the difference between the two Isas.

The two rust & white colored chicks were our Isa Browns.

Tira was our first egg layer and had gotten to the point of reliably laying a large brown egg every morning between 8:30 and 9:00. She was also very curious. For most of the summer Steve had mitre saw set up in the garage for various projects and we could not keep her from jumping up there. She was obsessed. Unfortunately we don’t have a good picture of this. Eventually he put a towel up there and we thought maybe she’d lay an egg there.

Tira’s first egg, about 2 weeks earlier than we expected, so we didn’t have a nest box set up in the coop yet.

We actually don’t have a recent picture of her, only this one with the other chickens that Natalie took.

Tira is on the right.

The day it happened was shortly after my surgery, so I couldn’t go walking through the woods to look for her and Steve was on his way back from up north. We weren’t sure if she was hiding somewhere really good, but we suspected she was gone. He did find a clump of feathers and lots of tears were shed.

Shortly after, I looked out the window to see everyone watching (and guarding) the other chickens out front. I didn’t open the door because I didn’t want them to know I was taking this picture.

The other chickens often hang out in the Front Circle, as we call it.

Later that night, Cale must have still been thinking about it, because he had been upstairs drawing without us knowing about it. He came down to show us this (pretty much the reason for this whole post):

I adore everything about this, especially Cale’s spelling of Tira’s name.