Now before anyone gets all worried, I have not lost any animals recently. This is just a post that I thought would be helpful to those who have lost an animal.
I am a sensitive person. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a sensitive person.
Loss and change have always been hard for me. Now, I've been fortunate enough not to lose any family members, friends or relatives that I was close too, so I can't relate to that. But I have lost my fair share of animals.
No matter where you are in life, loss is inevitable. Especially on a homestead.
Those who want to be as self sufficient as possible often grow and butcher their own food, I totally want to do that someday, but I know when that day comes I will feel bad taking an animals life. Even hunting sounds hard but I still really want to.
When I first started getting into animals, around 7 years old, I started doing research on hamsters. Hamsters are wonderful pets, each with their own adorable personalities, but something I didn't read, or maybe just didn't pay attention to, is that they are fragile, and their lifespan is short. As soon as you develop a bond with it, it dies. With my first hamster I was not nearly so fortunate as to be able to develop a bond with it. Sugar(my hamster) lasted a week and then died. Mostly because I was a terrible pet owner at the time. Sugar counted on me for everything she needed and I failed her. My next hamster Nibbles, (clever name right? she chewed a hole in her box when I was bringing her home from the pet store and we had to put her in a purse so that she wouldn't run free all over the truck) was no better. Each time was hard and each loss is still really hard for me.
Guinea pigs, fish, chickens, rabbits, cats, every death seemed to get harder and harder.
Probably my worst experience was earlier this year when I was getting my chicks. We had gone to a farm that is about an hour away to get two little chickens, a polish and a cream legbar. Now if I had any sense in me I would have asked to look over them and make sure they were bright eyed, chipper and completely healthy. The cream legbar sure was, she peeped and peeped all the way home in her little cardboard box and she's still doing great to this day. The polish was quiet, however and never perked up like the others when we brought her home and put her in the brooder.
We separated her and things went downhill from there. I set up a small brooder for her with a nice heat lamp and her own little dish of food and water, and I named her Snow. Big mistake right there, it really is true that you get more attached to things when you name them. A few times Snow tried to stand and eat but couldn't, I knew what was coming I just didn't want to believe it. I won't go into much more detail but I'll just say, I watched her die. I watched her take her last breath, and that just broke me. There was nothing I could have done for her, which is what made it so hard. She was just a weak chick, right from the start. I cried for 5 straight hours. What a "happy" memory to be reminded of every year on valentines day, the day she died. All my plans for this little polish chick that I had in my head shattered. I would never collect her first egg, never hear her first cluck.. Now it might sound silly that I was so emotional over losing a chick that I had only had for five hours, but I loved this little chick. And when you love something, you are putting your heart out on the line. You will never know if you loved it if you never try.
I was reading a blog post a couple months after this, all about dealing with loss on the homestead and these words struck me: "The day losing an animal, whether by killing it so you can eat or losing it to something else, gets easy, is the day I stop farming."
Death is hard. Always has been, always will be. God did not intend for our world to be poisoned with death.
Here are some things that help me cope: Just cry. Crying is normal, its actually really good for you. It relieves stress, removes toxins, lowers blood pressure, and does so many other things for you.
Another idea is to have a proper burial. I've made little headstones for all the animals I've lost. It helps.
If you have to tell someone about an animal that has died, the worst thing you can do is lie to protect their feelings. Their feelings will just be hurt worse if they ever find out the truth. There have been a few instances where the truth was definitely harder to hear, but like the Bible verse John 8:32 says"And you will know the truth. And that truth will set you free."
I hope this blog post helped you in some way, and if you have lost an animal recently I'm really sorry.
Thank you for reading, I will definitely try to make my next blog post much more cheerful :)
Blow up your TV, throw away the paper, keep homesteading and stay farmy!
