Made by Hand (17 page)

On Monday morning, Ethel didn’t want to leave the pet carrier I’d placed in the cage to give her a place to sleep. I was able to bribe her out with a little cooked pasta, but she pecked at it listlessly. I called the vet and said I wanted the oral antibiotic. She was hesitant and again brought up the issue of the eggs. I told her I’d rather have her alive and producing nonedible eggs than dead.

I drove to the clinic. The receptionist made me sign a letter promising that I would forever keep Ethel separated from the other chickens and that I would never consume her eggs. He explained that the antibiotics would be transferred to the eggs, possibly resulting in health problems for anyone who consumed them. I signed but with my fingers crossed behind my back. I still wasn’t sure whether I was going to give her the medicine.

On Tuesday morning, Ethel was lying listlessly in the pet carrier. I called for her to come out, but she wouldn’t get up. I gently removed her from the carrier and put her in my lap. After treating her wounds, I set her down; she stumbled and limped for a couple of feet, then stopped, unwilling to walk any farther. I decided it was time to give her the oral antibiotics.

The clinic told me to mix each dose into Ethel’s feed. But she wasn’t interested in eating her chicken scratch. My friend Shawn, who had a chicken that had survived an attack by an unknown woodland creature in northern California six months earlier, told me that she had put diced grapes into a large metal spoon mixed with the pink antibiotic and fed the mixture to her ailing hen. Since my hens loved grapes, I tried giving Ethel the same concoction, but she just knocked the grapes out of the spoon and didn’t bother trying to eat them. I went back home and scrambled an egg—which my chickens love to eat more than anything else—and mixed that with a dose of antibiotic. She ate it with gusto.

But when I tried feeding her the egg-antibiotic cocktail again on Wednesday morning, she didn’t want anything to do with it. I tried again with grapes, but no go. She had no appetite. I felt like I was losing her.

I was just about to call the clinic back when one of the vets called me to check up on Ethel’s progress. When I explained her condition, the doctor told me to bring her in so she could show me how to squirt the antibiotic down Ethel’s throat. “I have to show you, because it’s easy to accidentally squirt it down her trachea and into her lungs,” she said. “People have done that before.”

I returned to my sister-in-law’s house to fetch Ethel. She was back in the pet carrier, so I closed its door, picked it up, and drove her down the hill to the Studio City Animal Hospital. I was sent to a room, where a technician weighed Ethel, noting that she had lost about seventy grams since the last visit. That didn’t seem like much to me, but the technician said it wasn’t a good sign.

A little while later, Dr. Mao, the vet who had called me, came in. She seemed genuinely happy to see Ethel. She held the bird and moved the wings aside to examine the wounds. “They are healing really nicely!” she said. “That’s good.” Dr. Mao plucked out a few feathers that had gotten smeared into the wounds. Ethel flinched but didn’t make too much of a fuss. The vet pulled aside Ethel’s plumage with both hands to get a closer look at the bird’s skin. “Oh, here’s a laceration we missed,” she said, pointing out a deep gash that ran for a couple of inches along the chicken’s side. “We’ll have to staple that up after I show you how to give her the antibiotic.”

With her assistant holding Ethel, Dr. Mao pried open Ethel’s beak and shined a flashlight down her throat. It was hard for me to see what was in there, besides her comically pointed tongue, but I caught a glimpse of a little slit that was opening and closing.

“That’s where you
don’t
want to give her the medicine,” said Dr. Mao. “That’s the opening to her trachea, called the epiglottis. If you put the syringe there, it’ll deliver the medicine to her lungs.”

“I don’t see any other place to stick the syringe, though,” I said. “Where’s the throat hole?”

“It’s hard to see,” she said. “Let’s take another look.” She opened Ethel’s beak again and aimed the flashlight down her throat. Ethel made a gasping sound. All I could see was a pink tube.

“The hole is kind of folded shut,” she said. “That’s why it’s hard to see. Here, I’ll give her some of the medicine, and you can watch me.”

She filled the syringe with the pink antibiotic and pushed it into Ethel’s open beak. Ethel kicked her legs and hissed. Moving the syringe to the right side of Ethel’s epiglottis, Dr. Mao slid it in all the way to the handle. Then she pressed the plunger, delivering the full twenty-four-milliliter dose into Ethel’s stomach. It felt good to know that Ethel was finally getting some antibiotics into her system.

“Now,” Dr. Mao said, “I want you to try it.” She filled the syringe with water from the sink and handed it to me. Her assistant was still holding Ethel. I opened her beak with one hand, but she jerked her head away and clamped her mouth shut. It’s difficult to open a chicken’s mouth when she doesn’t want it to be opened, but I finally succeeded. I wedged my thumb and forefinger in the corner of her beak to prevent her from closing it again and stuck the syringe into the opening. Ethel gagged and struggled to break free, her legs scrabbling across the stainless-steel countertop.

I continued to push down on the syringe, frightened that I was going to hurt her. “Is that good?” I asked, ready to squirt the water.

“You have to push the syringe all the way down to the handle,” she said. “Otherwise you can’t be sure you’ve got it in the right place.” I gently wiggled the syringe around and suddenly felt it slide effortlessly down until the entire thing was in her throat. I depressed the plunger, and all the water went into Ethel’s stomach without any coming back up.

“Good!” said Dr. Mao. “You did it!” She was so nice and caring that I wished she could be my doctor. She took Ethel into another room, stapled the newly discovered wound, and gave her an intravenous injection of saline to rehydrate her.

I brought Ethel back to my sister-in-law’s house and, twice a day for the next two weeks, I’d get on my bike, ride over, and squirt the medicine down the bird’s throat. The first couple of times I brought Sarina along to hold Ethel down while I administered the medicine, but I eventually figured out a way to immobilize her between my knees so I could do it without assistance. Ethel never got used to the procedure, and as she started to improve, she got better at running away when I chased her around the cage. But I was always able to catch her and give her the medicine.

The oral antibiotics really did the trick. She started acting like the old Ethel after about four or five days, and her feathers started growing in, so she even looked like her former self. But she hadn’t resumed laying eggs. That was probably because she was still on the mend internally. It didn’t matter to me whether or not she’d ever lay eggs again. I was just happy to have her back.

I brought Ethel to the vet one more time, to have the staples removed. I was eager to return Ethel to her flock, because she looked lonely in the dog cage by herself. I was also getting a little tired of having to go to Melissa’s every day. But the vet told me I shouldn’t put Ethel in with the other chickens yet because they might pick at her staple holes. She should be sequestered for at least a week before reintroducing her to her friends.

Eight or nine days later, I put Ethel in her carrier and took her back to our house. What would the other chickens think of her after not seeing her for more than a month? Ethel had been the leader of the flock, so I hoped for the best. I opened the door to the chicken run and set the pet carrier inside. The other chickens, suspicious of the carrier, ran to the other side, eyeing it from a distance. I opened the carrier door, and Ethel tentatively stepped out. She went over to the food dispenser and began to eat. The other chickens, no longer afraid, approached her. In a few seconds they were mingling as if nothing had ever happened. But then Rosie, who had been the leader pro tempore during Ethel’s absence, lunged at her. She jumped on Ethel’s back and drove her beak between Ethel’s wings, yanking out a tuft of feathers. Ethel squawked and ran to a corner. The other hens descended on her, clucking furiously. I had to run back in and grab Ethel to rescue her. The others were supremely agitated, letting loose long, sirenlike caws that were so loud they brought Carla out to see what all the fuss was about.

I explained what was going on, and she went back in the house to search Google for an answer. I sat on the ground and held Ethel in my lap, stroking her while the other chickens strutted around in a jerky manner. In a few minutes Carla came out. She didn’t look happy. “Why didn’t you research this first?” she said. “You’re always shooting from the hip! You’re supposed to keep Ethel separated by a fence in the run for a week so they can get used to one another. Now you’ll have to take her back to my sister’s while you make a new fence.”

I didn’t want to make a new fence. I’d promised Carla that I would help her unpack the moving boxes that had been cluttering the house for weeks. The chickens had kept me so busy that I hadn’t been much help with getting settled in the new house. I felt like I’d spent more time with the chickens in the last six weeks than with my wife and daughters. Was this worth three or four eggs a day?

A fence would take too much time to build. I thought about the quickest way to take care of the problem. I looked at the roll of wire mesh next to the coop. “OK,” I said. “I can divide the chicken run into two areas with this wire-mesh fence. It’ll only take ten minutes or so.” I quickly set up a separating wall inside the chicken run, securing it with cable ties. I put Ethel on her side, gave her some food and water, and placed the pet carrier in there to give her a place to sleep. The other chickens were furious with the new arrangement and ran back and forth along the new barrier looking for a way to breach it so they could peck Ethel some more. Ethel aloofly ignored the irate hens, eating and drinking from her personal food and water containers.

Now that Ethel was safe from the other chickens, I left her alone and went into the house to help Carla unpack. I forgot about Ethel until evening, when we were ready to go to bed. I went outside with a flashlight and found her sitting on top of the pet carrier. Its door had swung shut, so she had been unable to get inside to sleep. I crawled into the pen and put Ethel in the carrier. I didn’t lock the door, thinking she might get claustrophobic if she couldn’t get out. I just swung the door closed, figuring she’d push it open in the morning.

When I woke up the next day, I checked on Ethel and found her still in the pet carrier. I propped the door open with a stick, and she came out and started drinking water. She was parched. I decided I’d better keep the pet carrier door open at night so she wouldn’t get stuck inside again.

That night, after putting the kids to bed, I went into the spare bedroom I used as an office to check my e-mail, and Carla went into the bedroom to read. After a few minutes she came into the office and whispered urgently, “It sounds like someone is walking around right next to the bedroom!”

“I’ll check,” I said. Carla handed me the aluminum baseball bat we keep for self-defense, and I grabbed the flashlight I keep on my nightstand. I shined the light through the glass door and didn’t see anything, at least not at first. Then, over by the chicken coop, I saw what looked like a couple of candle lights. They flickered, went out, and then reappeared.

“I see something!” I hissed. “Some little lights back there.” I pointed them out to Carla.

“What are they?” she said.

It struck me that they must be reflections from a wild animal’s eyes.

“Oh, no!” I said. “An animal is trying to get the chickens.”

I opened the door and kept my flashlight trained on the shining eyes. They disappeared. I walked hesitantly toward the coop. Did mountain lions live in these hills? I know they have been spotted in Los Angeles before. I felt ridiculous walking out there, barefoot with a pencil flashlight and a baseball bat in the pitch dark with no idea what kind of enemy I might be facing. I swept the light around the property and caught the shining eyes again, this time closer to the fence that separated our yard from the undeveloped canyon below. My flashlight wasn’t strong enough for me to make out what kind of animal was down there, but from the vague, roundish outline, it didn’t seem like a coyote. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a raccoon. I kept the flashlight on it, thumped the bat on the ground, and yelled for the animal to go away. The eyes disappeared.

I turned the light to the chicken run. Ethel wasn’t in the pet carrier. She wasn’t in the pen. Then I saw the wooden stakes I’d used to hold down the wire mesh. They’d been ripped out of the ground. One of the stakes was smeared a shiny red. I saw feathers scattered next to the pen.

“It got Ethel!” I shouted to Carla, who was standing in the bedroom doorway.

“Oh, no!” she said. When I got back to the bedroom, she hugged me and told me how sorry she was. I suddenly felt exhausted and foolish. Everything I’d done to help Ethel get better had been a waste of time. After weeks of medical care and recuperation, a hungry predator had snatched her in a flash, and that was the end of her.

That night, Carla and I talked about our eight months with the chickens. In our old house, the hens had had the run of the yard and had been supremely happy. It was a pleasure to watch them graze, take naps on the wrought-iron table in the front yard, chase squirrels, and mingle with our cats (who pretended the chickens weren’t there). We’d never seen a coyote, and while we’d seen raccoons once in a while, they’d never bothered the chickens.

But raising chickens here in Studio City had stopped being fun, both for us and for the chickens. During the day they were constrained to an area off to the side of the house, so we weren’t able to enjoy their presence in the way that we had when we lived in the old house. Here the wildlife was fiercer and bolder. My attempt to build a predator-free environment for them had put a strain on my family, because I’d spent so much time on it. The chickens laid eggs less frequently than before, the yolks weren’t as orange as they had been, and the hens had picked up the habit of pecking and breaking the eggs in the nest box. The fun we’d had with the chickens had been spoiled.