Farewell Rue

This is Arugula, my favorite dinosaur ever. She was gobbling up watermelon to beat the heat just yesterday and this morning I found her weak and distressed. Mercifully, by this evening, she had gone on ahead.

I brought her home when she was just 2 weeks old and named her just a few days after that. Little did I know how fitting a name it would be for this spicy, sassy chicken who, it turns out, loved arugula! Rue was top chicken for much of her life and she kept her eye to the sky, patrolled the yard, chased squirrels away, and even once swallowed a mouse whole, like a snake! She would let me pick her up and carry her around the yard with me for a long time but would always sass and complain afterwards, as if she couldn’t let me know she was that soft.

A year and a half ago, through death and re-homing (some of the newer, younger girls were bullying the seniors, so they became Granby High Comet chickens), Rue suddenly was the last chicken standing. Though I felt my days of chicken tending were winding down, I couldn’t leave her flock-less and got her some companions only to have another round of loss leaving just her and Marzipan as partners. Last winter Rue had a period of wheezing. I nursed her and negotiated for one more spring, dare I ask for one more summer? She gave me one day short of a whole spring.

Arugula and her sisters, Clove and Ellie Mae, gave me peace and purpose at one of the hardest points of my life. When my entire life landscape shifted dramatically, they got me out of bed every morning to feed them and spent meditative hours in the yard with me as company and models of just being. Arugula always, always, always was the very last chicken to return the coop and always sassy about it. I am so grateful to have been her companion for 9 long chicken years and so lucky that she resisted release to the beautiful, swirly stardust. I indulge myself in believing she did it, in part, for me.

Thank you, Arugula, for fulfilling my long-held dream of being a chicken mama and for helping to put my heart back together new and better, even if it feels a little broken again. ✨💖✨