*[Enwl-eng] Backyard Lessons in Love
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Sat Sep 20 20:32:31 MSK 2025
What companion animals can teach about acceptance and opening our hearts.
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NEWSLETTER | SEPTEMBER 19, 2025
Backyard Lessons in Love
As those of you who have been reading this
newsletter for a while may know, I keep backyard hens. Mostly rescues from
factory farms or adopted from people who can’t keep them any longer for one
reason or another. Since they tend to be elderly and I live in an
urban-wildland interface, death (by predator or illness) is a frequent
visitor to the backyard.
That was certainly the case in late 2023,
when my flock dwindled to one — a black-feathered hen called Dahlia. Skinny
and belligerent, Dahlia never got along with other hens (which is why she
was handed to us). So when various maladies carried away her coop-mates, we
decided she could have the place to herself until it was her time as well.
Dahlia seemed to like that quite fine — until spring came along. Then she
got broody. She sat in the nesting box for three or four days, barely
eating, hoping her unfertilized eggs would hatch. (You need a rooster to
make baby chicks, and we don’t keep one because of city noise ordinances.)
She got over it eventually, but when spring 2025 rolled around, she was back
at it, starving herself and pining for babies.
We are softies, I guess. So we sourced some
fertilized eggs from Whole Foods (yup, they sell those) and from a friend
who lives on a farm and placed them under her. Two weeks on, in mid-June, a
yellow fluffball peeked out! My daughter named the chick Sunny. The rest of
the eggs didn’t hatch, so a few days later, we bought three week-old chicks
of assorted breeds from a farm store and stuck them under Dahlia at night.
She spread her wings over the little ones and accepted them all. Watching
the once-crabby hen cooing softly at her adopted babies as they scampered
around the backyard was such a joy.
Then, one August evening, after a careless
mistake, death came stalking again through the open coop door. Three chicks
survived, but the raccoons got the littlest one. And Dahlia. All we found of
her were piles of black feathers in the coop, by the fence, all around the
yard. She had died defending her babies.
I’ve been grieving in waves since, but also
marveling at a Mama Dahlia, whose love, once ignited, was so expansive, so
fierce. She didn’t give a damn about where those chicks came from or what
breed they were. Amid all the violence and hate-filled discourse that’s
swirling around us at the moment, I’m holding onto the idea that we too have
the capacity to love those who might not be quite like us.
*
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new avenues of growth for the Journal together.
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor-in-Chief, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Maureen
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From: Editors, Earth Island Journal <editor at earthisland.org>
Date: сб, 20 сент. 2025 г., 2:45
Subject: Backyard Lessons in Love
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