Mourning chickens

I'm really sad today.

 My little Blue Cochin chicks are gone, vanished overnight.  Gone.  No little chicks in the locked chicken coop this morning.

Siblings.  The white one is a rooster.

The chicken coop on the left.  

We introduced them slowly to the chickens and coop, letting them stay in their cage.  Monday, we let them out to wander around the chicken yard and closed them up in the chicken coop for the night.  Tuesday we let them sleep in the big coop, putting a small box in there so they could huddle together.  I locked the door to the coop, went out the gate into the fenced in garden and then locked that gate too.  When I went to let them out this morning they were gone.  The only sign of them was a pile of black feathers and a pile of white feathers--outside the locked chicken coop!  How it all happened and what happened I will never know.  All I know is that something got them and they are gone.

They were really cute.  They always walked in threes. They were gentle in that I could scoop all three of them up in my hands at once.  They were young and little.  I am so sad.

  

I know that they are just chickens. But we incubated two of them and watched them grow from the egg to being ready to be on their own.  We had to let them go , they had outgrown their small cage and needed to stretch their wings.  Poor chicks.

I admit I shed a few tears when I saw the pile of feathers. I know if I lived on a farm I'd see death like this
more often and I know that in the scheme of life, chicks aren't much.

  


But I really liked them. 

 I will miss my fine feathered friends.