i dreamt i was a dog with bloodied jaws.
(cw traumatic injury, pet injury, mentions of pet death, gore, intrusive thoughts)
It seems that November is the moon for hungry predators. It was around this time a couple years ago that I lost my hen Pepper to the raccoon, whose festering bite killed her months later. They strike at night. I should know better by now, really.
Last night one of my young hens, Roxie, the brown girl, not two years old, sweet Easter Egger with her silly beard fluff, was bitten by an unidentified creature in the night. She screamed into the darkness, screamed again, and screamed again with the shock and pain of it. As I threw myself out of bed I thought grimly that it was a good sign- it meant she wasn't dead.
Whatever bit her must have been cowardly- no bold raccoon dragging my poor spotted hen into the vines, this one. By the time I finished clattering down the stairs it was gone, and at first I didn't see what was wrong. All five of my hens in their enclosure, the door neglectfully ajar; they were stressed and aflutter but sometimes chickens spook, that was the way of things--
Roxie was huddled and silent between her sister hens by the time I thought to turn the lights on, and only then did I see the red pouring down over the wooden slats they liked to perch on. Recent blood, ruby red, the fresh chicken meat smell rich in my nose. Vivid in my eyes despite the darkness, vivid on my untasting tongue. Remembering it makes me sick and hungry all at once.
She'd been bitten on her rump, near the cloaca, a deep wound mostly hidden by her feathers that I hadn't been willing to look at too closely, myself. I spent much of the rest of the night with her in the veterinary ER, alternately pacing and dozing in an empty lobby. Once, in the distance, I heard her squawking protest, and I strode at the unattended reception desk as if to go to her, before catching myself. All told, I got about two hours of sleep before going in to my usual 11-hour shift at work. Roxie I left in the care of the vet hospital.
I wish I hadn't let the vets explain in quite so much detail what was wrong with her wound. I keep seeing the pictures they showed me, bloody flesh peeled back; I keep remembering the descriptions: deep wound, skin flap hanging off, infection risk, potentially not enough skin to close the wound. Then, after the surgery: last vertebra detached, not viable, removed, whatever bit her tore through skin and fat and muscle and yanked the tip of her tail off. They reconstructed her tail, but they're keeping her inpatient for monitoring: the skin stretched tight over the wound might yet peel back and flay from the flesh.
Driving home from work that day I bite my own teeth in the darkness; my jaw grinds and clenches on nothing but a sense memory. I remember the sweet smell of blood, fresh and red, the scent of chicken fat, so rich, so delicious; I remember layers of fat peeling back before my teeth; the crack of bones, delicate in my jaw; the textures of tiny vertebrae, rough on my tongue. I've never been ashamed of being a carnivore before- but now the joy of it melts like fat and draws out the flavor of remembered pain and fear. Every time I think of Roxie I think of her wounds, and I remember how it must have felt to inflict them. I grind my jaw and bite against nothing again.
Let me take her back from the hospital today. Let me care for her wounds, and scritch her beard, and feed her treats; let me forget what it felt like to be her killer.
