Dead Fancy Bird Zen

It doesn't matter how far I travel I'm always reminded that born and raised in Idaho back in the 1970s was about living in a farming community. Everyone had chickens, gardens, squash patches, fruit trees and most of all grown up trees. Big trees.
I took from this upbringing the revelation that there is inherent good in those who care for their environment. Their land, their family, their character.

So why am I writing about a Dead Fancy Bird? 
HRH Margaret is.. or rather, was, my fancy breed bird. She was a Belgian d'Uccle Mille Fleur.

My Spidy-senses should have been tipped off by the fact that her name weighed more than she did. 

If anyone has happened to catch my previous posts, on my ill-fated dabblings into the magic of hatching eggs, you will understand the following better than anyone else.


Maggie was the lone chick to have survived my inept hatching contraptions and various flock attacks by dogs and the weather.  She was almost a year old, and quite gorgeous. You might remember that I ordered all those wonderful fancy eggs not too long ago. Yep. I thought I was Caroline fricking Ingalls. In reality it was a little closer to this:

Anyhow-- she managed to survive my best attempts to snuff her here at Chicken Survivor Island.
Over this last year it seems I've become the female equivalent of Lenny from the Grapes of Wrath.
Thank God someone talked me out of rabbits. Gretchen Anderson might have had to give some quote on how many Backyard Chicken Keepers go off the deep end.

Ok.. I have to stay focused.

Maggie's breed type and champion lines were what attracted me to her. Her brother Winston died last year from-- I kid you not-- a heart attack after a vicious puppy barking incident involving my chihuahua.
Heart attacks in certain fowl are not uncommon. This can actually happen in some breeds of birds... and I knew that.
I also knew that even with champion breed lines, certain birds requires a home for which those types of breeds are more suited.

So...at the end of the day I'm left with no one to blame and a Dead Fancy Bird. I get the Zen and learned my lesson from her death. So please don't flame me with hate mail.

Still, the Idaho Matriarch in me didn't like not having something to show for the effort. Needless to say I have a ziploc bag full of beautiful speckled super soft feathers that I'm determined to make into jewelry.
I'm sure my creations will be picked up immediately for Paris Fashion Week and I'll start a charity in HRH Maggie's name dedicated to congenital heart defect among fancy bird breeds.

But most likely they will end up gracing our Holiday Tree... glued to macaroni art and covered in glitter.

I promise to think about my Dead Fancy Bird Zen every time I look at the feathers.