30 May

The hen diary will soon be coming to an end, with one last post after this to record Maude’s move to her new home.  Neighbours in the same street have kindly agreed to take Maude in with their own hens, after another dog attack took the lives of Wilma, Mabel and Goldie.  I don’t want the dog to know where Maude lives so she can’t stay here, and she needs company, she has been calling and calling the other hens from the coop, and when I let her out she followed me everywhere I went,  not ever moving more than a step away.  This last year has been a year full of griefs and anxiety for me and through the hardest times it was always consoling to have the hens around, getting on with their own lives but including me occasionally in their conversations.  I took an interest in spiders I wouldn’t otherwise have taken, and learned the panic calls of other birds that the hens always stopped to attend to.  I don’t know how I will live without hens, I heard myself think today, but people do live without hens.  I will live in my thoughts, another consolatory space, as well of course in the world, a world without hens for me but with Maude, after all, only across the road.