Thank You, ChaCha

Our menagerie is growing. On Thursday, we got four active, healthy-looking chicks by mail. On Friday there were three. It is the girls’ first year of 4-H, and their leader had prepared them to expect that not all would arrive alive, and, of those who did, that not all would stay that way.

Nevertheless.

The chicks had names within five minutes of arrival: my eldest’s Black Cochins were dubbed ChaCha and Angel. My youngest’s Delawares Dot and Fluff. They settled into their new brooder in the basement quickly, scuttling about, sucking down water, and nibbling at food. When we woke the next morning, ChaCha was more sluggish than the rest. We gave her some nutrient-packed gro-gel, but she continued to weaken over the next few hours. My eldest cradled her in her palm as she took her last, and we buried her in the front yard.

In this culture, we fetishize death as horrifying and taboo. For many, it is something that happens out of the public, or even private, view, in the sanitized setting of hospitals, hospice, vet clinics. We generally don’t have to deal with the materiality of dead bodies. Instead we fixate on that immaterial essence, the soul, and try to take comfort from it.

But really, life is ordinary, and so is death. This happens all the time, everywhere: city, rural, wild. As parents raising animal-crazy kids, this is something we as a family are starting to have to deal with more often: to date, three goldfish, a dog, a rat, and now, a chick. I don’t hide it from them, and I give them options: how much of the dying they want to witness (whether to be there when our dog was put down or to hold ChaCha when it was clear the end was near), if they want to make a choice about what to do with the body (a water or land burial for their fish, where to dig a grave for the rat), and what, if any, kind of memorial they want. The girls each deal with loss very differently. My youngest pushes grief away and then it erupts slowly over time; my eldest lets it carry her and then finds ways to comfort herself by figuring out where death fits in her evolving cosmology.

Death may be ordinary, but I never want the girls to be callous towards it—all lives matter. But I don’t want them to be hamstrung by it either. It can feel a hard line to walk, especially with the chicks. We are now looking at getting a few more to make sure the girls will have birds to show in 4-H this summer, since there are still many dangers ahead for them, including the transition outside in six weeks into our temperamental high plains spring weather (I should have ordered more at the outset for this eventuality, but programmatic mortality is a new mentality for me).

As a parent, it is difficult to figure out how to talk about the fact that life is not an interchangeable or replaceable commodity, while also recognizing its ubiquity and the need or desire for new animals to step into the positions the old held in our lives. I’m not sure our language is equipped to talk about it properly. Especially with pets or animals that have a more instrumental role, like 4-H (even ours who will be for eggs, not meat).

Whether of livestock, or otherwise, it would be crippling to feel each death fully. I am a carnivore, without apology, but with reverence. Life of any kind, including plant life, isn’t possible without death: carnivores eat herbivores, herbivores eat plants, plants rely on soil enriched by the mulch of dead organisms. I rank all of these lives as of the same value, regardless of brain size or cuteness. Therefore I figure I just have to accept that deaths are the price of my life, and to live with thanks and humility, for both plants and animals, knowing that I’ll give it back some day. It is an uncomfortable position, but it feels to me like an honest one. There is no way to live harmlessly, but it needn’t be with guilt or constant mourning.

That said, we did mourn ChaCha. I don’t know that we’ll mourn every passing, but I do hope we’ll remember to say thank you for each life lived.