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My boys have left me. 

My eldest son is in the Canary Islands on a Fulbright Grant teaching English. My youngest son is a Freshman at Purdue University in the Engineering program. Their bedrooms are empty, their cars sit fallow in our driveway, the house is unusually quiet - especially in the evenings. I told my husband I wanted a dog - never having owned one and not wanting the experience to pass me by. He said no.

 Soooo....instead....I got a new rooster and four new baby chicks. The chicks are set up in our kitchen so my husband can hear their incredibly sweet - but incessant cheeping. Naturally the rooster is in the chicken coop, but crows each time my husband walks outside. 

It's natural to want to fill the empty spaces up in life with things - pets, hobbies, cocktail parties, trips, new jobs, friends, family....

Chickens are also social creatures. They thrive being with one another. Mother hens take care of their babies. However - when a chicken dies, or baby chicks become independent - that's that...life moves on. They move onto pecking for food on the ground, laying an egg, jumping up on the roost to observe, cleaning their feathers, clucking and more pecking,. Not that a chicken has said to me "oh I'm so sad that so and so chicken is gone or grown"....but they don't seem to wallow in the loneliness of absence.. 

I need to do that - I need to peck for my food (well - that's shopping I guess), lay an egg (that's ok - I'll gather my eggs), get on my roost to observe my surroundings, clean my feathers, and cluck away. 

So chickens are not known to think quickly on their feet. Decision making skills seem to come in after much reflection, pacing, looking around, head bobbing, and possibly some clucking. It takes a hen many rounds to inspect various nesting boxes to decide on where to lay an egg. We even have 'spa' areas for hens to use to take a dust bath, and it takes each one many minutes to stare at the spa to decide if they want to get in and clean. 

We should take a page from the chicken decision making time. Maybe we ought to carefully consider all the options before we jump in. 

Eight weeks ago a fox and raccoon broke into our chicken coop and took out 7 hens and Gunther our beloved rooster. We were devastated. Yet this is the story of owning chickens. 

After the carnage was cleared from the coop, I gathered 4 eggs from the nesting boxes, bought an incubator, and prayed that something would hatch - keeping the DNA of Gunther (and his father Carl) alive. Amazingly on October 7, two babies hatched - one black (Vivian - named after my fearless and chatty neice), and one yellow who is Gunther's son. (We've named him Toto from Toto Wolfe, Mercedes F1 racing). 

It's been a miracle to watch the babies hatch and grow into young adults. We are incredibly happy that something positive has come out of something that was devastating. 

This is life - beginning anew.

Gunther is our newest rooster. We hatched him last spring and he took full reign of the hen house after his father, Carl, passed away. He is the BEST rooster ever! He is fiercely protective of his flock, yet he is not aggressive towards us. He loves his food and shares with his women. It is especially funny when we feed him craisins from our hands - he will pick one out to pass off to a hen, then eat one himself, then pass one out, then eat one, and so on. All the while making what we call 'yummy sounds', which is a loud clucking noise made in his throat. Gunther puts 100% of his effort into being a rooster and he is exhausted, sleeping soundly at night in between his hens where it is the warmest and softest. 

Maybe we could to learn a lesson from Gunther, and try to give at least 80% of our effort into our work, our families, our lives....if anything, to sleep soundly at night knowing we did our best.

I have to deviate from talking about the chickens this time of year. Winter isn't too interesting for chickens by the way. They hunker down and keep warm with their built-in down jackets. Their egg laying decreases and they don't move around much. Gunther, our newest rooster, still crows, but limits that to a few times in the morning or for the Amazon delivery truck. 

However - I had the opportunity to head down to our beach house this weekend. I needed to take care of a few household items and didn't mind taking some time for myself. I took walks on the beach for hours at a time - just me and my 1980's music. Along the way, I was fortunate to come across all kinds of wild life - seagulls (who are....let's me honest....like sea chickens), pelicans (I love them!), starfish, shrimp boats, and assorted shells. I happened to come across a half sand dollar (skeleton) and thought it was lovely. Not the best kind - the best is to find a whole one, but for whatever reason it appealed to me. 

I bent down and took a photo and when I returned back to the house, I realized that it was the most beautiful picture. It could speak of loneliness, maybe "half of a whole", cold and wet.....but rather.....it is beauty in all of it's wholeness. The half sand dollar isn't solitary...it's existing as a fossil in an environment teaming with life. 

Maybe the lesson here is that while we may feel alone at times....we have to remember that we exist in a world filled with life. Alone isn't solitary.