Henrietta is dying…there’s no other way to say it. All week long she’s been getting weaker. She refuses to eat or drink. Tuesday she stayed on her perch most of the day until I picked her up and put her out side. But she wouldn’t stay, she ended up perching on the door sill, watching her friends in the pen. Yesterday, Wednesday, when I went outside to let the chickens out into the yard about midday….she hobbled over to me…following the sound of my voice because one of her eyes seems blind and she can’t walk very well. I picked her up and held her on my knee for a few moments.

She kept looking at me with her one good eye. Last night she stayed on the floor of the coop. Dan put her in a corner away from the other roosting birds. This morning she was still there but one of the White Ladies was sitting with her…a bit later the White Lady left and one of the Aracaunas came in….she ended up setting behind and under Henrietta…literally holding her up! So very strange, but they know she’s in her last days, maybe hours, and Henrietta has always had a presence about her. As Melissa says, apparently she was a superstar in their world too! She’s always had to have the top perch – from the beginning and that is supposed to be a hierarchy of importance in the chicken world.

I’m very sorry to see her go…but we all must go at some time. She’s definitely had a good life here on Hope Farm…hard in some ways…she had to work so hard to eat with that crooked beak. But then again, we’ve always provided her a special tray of food to eat from. Guess we’ll retire that tray after she goes. We’ve kept her beak trimmed once a month…haven’t had to trim it this month… I should have been warned that if her beak’s not growing, she’s not either. Thank you Henrietta for showing me and others through Henrietta’s Hope that God has a special plan for us even with our crooked beaks! May you truly rest in peace.