Bella the chicken

Something sad happened today, one of our chickens died. Bella was her name. She was fine this morning and when we checked on the hens this afternoon Bella was laying on the floor of the coop and unable to move much. She didn't look good and I knew it wouldn't be long. With the boys and Michael out of town, that left Anna and I to deal with it. We didn't really know what to do but bring her comfort so we took turns petting her. Anna and I spoke a lot about death, she had a lot of questions, I did my best to answer them, and then we decided to take a break and come inside for a while. About 30 minutes later, we went back to the coop and she had died. We wrapped her in a towel and our sweet neighbors came right over when they saw us out front and helped us dig a hole. Anna wrote on the tombstone and said her goodbyes. I don't know how it's possible to be attached to a chicken and be sad for it's death, but we loved her just like we love our other pets. Here are some pictures from today. If you don't want to see what a sick chicken looks like, then don't view them. Nothing graphic, it just might make you sad. And there is one picture of Anna holding Bella after she was wrapped in the towel on her way to be buried. I was so surprised how brave Anna was, I never thought she would want to carry a dead chicken but she wanted to.

This is what Bella looked like a few weeks ago, happy and healthy!

 And this was today after we noticed she was sick.

 Her sisters look on, they kept coming to check on her.

 Anna called Grandma and Papa to tell them that Bella was sick.

 on the way to the burial.

 What would we do without our great neighbors?