As autumn set in last year, I thought Esmerelda, at age seven, had entered a well-merited retirement. For nearly six years she rarely had missed a day in providing a beautifully formed brown egg, true to her breed as a proud Rhode Island Red.
Domineckers are my favorite breed of chickens, quite docile and personable, qualities in which most Reds I have found to be lacking, but Esmerelda is different.
We did not host a retirement party for her, nor did we offer any special present in recognition of her faithful service, but clearly, or thus I thought, she had passed into the post-laying phase of her life. In that new epoch, she remained active, enjoying her meals, drinking a consummate level of water and simply taking things in stride, assured that she would never see the stew pot.
She seemed less bothered by Gladys, always realizing that when life on the ground became intolerable due to Gladys’s difficult behavior, she could fly up to her roost or former nesting box to get away from it all. Esmerelda has the tallest cockscomb of any hen I ever have seen, exceeding that of many roosters. In a crowd of hens, she stands out due to her near-regal red topknot.
Despite having come to us as a day-old chick, Esmerelda never became imprinted, that is she does not think of herself as a pet, but as an individual doing her own thing. In the days when we had a rooster, she craved motherhood, brooding in her nest for weeks at a time, but always to no avail. She refused food for days on end, unwilling to rise from the nest, even to eat, hence I had no choice but to serve her in situ, the human equivalent of having breakfast in bed. When the eggs did not hatch, she went into a state of apparent deep depression, not at all acing in her usual determined manner.
Last year, she gave up prolonged setting, merely laying the eggs and then getting back to her usual routine. She enjoys exercise and constantly is on the move. She is neat and trim, magnificently feathered and ever spry and alert. She can hop up on the nesting box with no difficulty at all. During the winter months, Hedwig, her sister Rhode Island Red, departed this life, leaving Esmerelda as the last surviving of the once-sizable flock of hens. At seven, I did not expect her to have a lengthy retirement.
Suddenly, two weeks ago, to my shock and amazement, when I went out to serve the fowl their morning meal, Esmerelda was in her nesting box. I have eight boxes, but she always has claimed the same one. I surmised that she was getting a break from Gladys, which I could understand, as one could take only a certain amount of incessant honking, which I am sure the other fowl consider to be anserine gibberish.
For the following two days, I saw Esmerelda there again. Finally, I approached the nesting box, only to find that indeed she had not retired at all, as the box contained five eggs. I was elated and I had the impression that she was saying, “I am not retired until I say I am retired.”
I attributed the turn in events to being akin to the paraphrase of the familiar saying that in the springtime a young man’s fancy turns to love, in this instance being reworked as in the spring an old hen’s fancy turns to laying, even if not nesting.
I try not to read more into animal behavior than is realistic, but in the present situation, I am convinced that Esmerelda is saying to me, “Ha, fooled you this time.”
Eggs being a symbol of the season, Happy Easter to all!
