I never got to tell you about the terrible awful

It's kind of lost some of its zing, but i haven't even gotten to tell the people closest to me about a very dramatic minor horror story we lived through about a week ago.

So i'm going to try to get it down on "paper" while it still has some of the zing left.

The players:

Us.

image borrowed:
 http://www.tarynblyth.co.za/articles/pack-theory-fact-or-fiction/

Neighborhood dogs.

This guy, who wasn't really there.

These beautiful chickens.

These beautiful chickens.

and oh yeah....

image borrowed from:  http://smehealthandsafety.co.uk/fire/

Fire.

The titles:

This very true tale has so much going on in it for me, that i can't seem to settle on a title.

The Terrible Awful

The Unhappy Graduation

I Could Have Gone All Day Without Seeing That

O.k.  I guess that's all i've got in the way of titles.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back in March of this year, i didn't tell you that we experienced a small but surprisingly life-changing fire in our home.  (For those of you counting......yeah, i'm not really sure how many that is, but it's the fourth time we've had a fire that removed us from our home.)  That's all i'm going to say about that.  I don't like fire.

A couple of years ago, we had the electric company (i was too tired of looking for images to get an image for the power company) install a security light sort of in our front yard.  It's on all the time.  ALL.

The security light became a problem earlier this year, when my very resourceful chicks figured out that if they hung out underneath the security light late at night (instead of going to bed like good little chickens), they could fill their little crops full of more yummy bugs than any young chick has ever dared to dream of.  And then they found out that what goes around comes around, when several of them never made it home to the coop.

After the incident with the security light, i was down to three baby chicks -- two girls and a boy.  The boy, i figured, would become dinner one day, but i wasn't really looking forward to that.

One day last week, in an unforseen and unprecedented turn of events, my Rooster, Chuck, instead of going to bed with all the other chickens, nestled himself down on a wooden chair on our porch for the night.  I really don't know how it happened exactly, but it did.  And once it became dark outside, the only light he could see was the light coming from the windows of our home, and......the much brighter security light.

Chickens instinctively go toward light for safety.  Just FYI.

Chuck is our prized and beautiful and good mannered rooster, who rose to heroic standards when he raised three of our orphan chicks as his own after one of our hens passed away unexpectedly.  I've never seen a rooster like Chuck before.  Ever.  

Chuck, with his brood

We know that predators frequent our home at night and eat our chicken feed off the porch, so we tried very hard to get chuck to go to the coop, where there is safety.

First, i tried to sneak up on him.

Comic relief:  How do you catch a unique rabbit?  You 'neek up on it.

 How do you catch a tame rabbit?  Tame way.  You 'neek up on it.

That didn't work.

Then i started to try to chase him toward the coop.

That didn't work.

Then i went to the coop and pretended i had treats and started calling him.  

That started to, but didn't work.

My husband came out to help

That still didn't work.

I finally realized that Chuck couldn't see his way through the darkness to the coop.  He was scared.  Poor thing.  So i tried to turn on the light in our coop, which is a light fixture attached to an extension cord that plugs in to the side of our house.  But it didn't work.  No power.

"That's weird," thought my husband, who followed the cord back to the outlet, and simply started to unplug it.

I turned around when i heard a loud buzzing noise, and i saw a shower of big ugly oversized "sparks" shooting out from the outlet, at my husband.

Look, for the most part, at this point in my life, there are two things that really hurt my feelings:  one - the slightest implication that we might ever have to deal with the aftermath of another house fire (or any other fire), and two - anything happening to my loving, kind, prize of gun-slinging super hero husband.

I wish i knew how to show you the complete change in emotion through a blog post.  Relief, mixed with shock, (mixed with a little gall at the paid electricians who recently re-wired that outlet), and just plain overwhelmedness at what might have happened.  And thankfulness.  In tears, but thankfulness.

My husband made sure that outlet wasn't going to burn us down in our sleep.  And then he held me, with his still tingling arm, while i cried myself to sleep.  And hoped that Chuck would be o.k. on the porch.  Hopefully, if i couldn't sneak up on him (as though i'm stealthy), nothing else would be able to either.

The dream.

I didn't have a dream.  My hubby did.  He told me about it the next day.

In the dream, all our chickens are out in the yard.  But the neighborhood dogs are gathering around like they want to go after our chickens, so we're trying to round them up and get them to go inside.  In the midst of this, a neighborhood boy comes with a gun, and he's aiming it at our chickens!  And we're trying to round them up.  Trying to get them to go inside.  Then my hubby sees his brother come up.  And he tells his brother what we're doing and asks him to help.  Then he hears a noise.  When he looks, he sees his brother, with blood on him, walk up and throw our rooster, Chuck, on the ground.  He had snapped his neck!  My hubby is very angry (and telling him so) with his brother (who in real life, would not do such a thing), in the dream.  

Neighborhood dogs.

My husband's brother, whose face
has been hidden, to protect his innocence.

And then hubby wakes up.

It's 3:20 a.m.

He goes outside.

And Chuck isn't on the porch anymore.

At 4:30 a.m., we didn't hear the normal crowing.

And when daylight came, i found a little pile of feathers that i won't show you a picture of because my hubby said he could've gone all day without seeing that picture.

Chuck was gone.  Maybe the best rooster i ever met.

When i went to take care of the rest of the chickens in the morning, i thought about how the little rooster's life had been saved that night, and how he had gotten a name.  Chuck II.  Or Chucklet, for now.  What a sad graduation.  But he's going to be a pretty one; i can tell.  He was one of the ones raised by Chuck.  Hope he learned something.  Thankful for Chuck again.  For raising his heir.

I cried on the way to work that day.  

But i have to be thankful.

I could've lost a home and a husband.  I lost a beloved rooster, instead.