Web of life

 

I said a few days ago that I wanted to tell you story about chickens, dogs and myself.  Like so many impressions in my soul, when they offer words and the opportunity is not taken, it may be hard to find your way into the magnitud and shape of what was revealed in those instants full of meaning.  But I will try to find the path, by walking it in the retelling of what happened.

I was busy doing something with my hands, touching and moving things that have to do with earth.  Memory, as happens with dreams, has been transmuted into sensations. Perhaps I was weaving more tepozán branches into a fence, when suddenly I heard a chicken making a ruckus from below, near the "bodega del río", as I have named the shed we built of pallets, almost two stories tall, tall enough so it has a "tapanco" that could be used as a sleeping loft.  Immediatey, I recognized the alarm in her voice, my eyes darted to where I heard the sound that was repeated in staccatto pleeing waves for help.  Almost before I could process what was happening, I echoed her, seeing one of my dogs in pursuit: Chaparro!  Chaparro!  Chaparro! I called out repeatedly in the loudest strongest most alarming voice I could produce, a voice that echoed and amplified her pleeing waves for help.  Chaparro had her by the tail, feathers were flying, I was yelling. Too far to strike or intercede physically, I threw my voice with full force towards Chaparro to call him off.  He let go of her long enough for her to scramble in ball hurtled by her fear, over some stones, past a maguey and up a small hill and out of sight into the  brown winter folliage of bushes burned brown by the last week's cold snap. The colors matched her color, and dense nopales also obscured her whereabouts.  

Reymundo, who had come running, arrived, there were feathers everywhere, fine downy feathers, body feathers and long tail feathers, but there was no blood, a good sign.  Chaparro seemed to understand my displeasure and just cowered near the ground under my glowering gaze. Reymundo and I looked and looked and looked.  She was nowhere to be found.  She had disappeared after being attacked when she was scared from her place under a maguey where we had seen her laying an egg earlier.  The roosters were far off on the other side of Mira Uri, nowhere near enough to have come to her aid.  

Reymund, an intuitive Piscean who moves on land with the ease of water, was confident she would come out, and he was sure that the "gallos" would look for her.  And soon they came, calling, the whole gang, 4 roosters and 8 or 10 hens. When they saw the feathers littered across the ground, they could be heard calling out in alarming raising a ruckus, objecting, warning others of danger, but also calling to her... they called and called, and, not right away, but after some time, when we had left them to their business of restoring their tribe, I noticed that there was no more ruckus and there was an air of quiet normality. The tribe had resumed looking for bugs and seeds on the ground and in the earth beneath the trees.  I approached and looked for her, first I saw one of her sisters or cousins, who still had her tail feathers, so I knew it wasn't her... I stood still, and there, rounding the corner beneath some low hanging pirul branches this side of a nopal, I saw her—she had three of her "galanes" watching out for her, keeping a protective eye on things. Calm had been restored.  

I am left with such a deep respect for this interwoven shared intelligence, web of life. How the chickens and the roosters care for each other, sense danger, and restore the tribe's balance after trauma. How a call of alarm, its rhythm and urgency is felt and sung out depths, moving species to species it is understood. Chicken, to human, to dog, the sounds of the song, initiated in an agression, moved through us, each, in turn, adding our gestures, responding to the rhythm with our voices, and completing the dance, our dance on the earth. Each of us learning from the moves of the other... later one of the "galanes" danced before me, cocking his head to side, eye straight on, as though to say, "you, yes you" and he shook his head vigorously, the feathers his neck fanning out making him look so magnificent as he pulled his had back and let out a cry, once, and then then again, and again, acknowledging my presence in this web. Then, he went on about his business.

Before leaving for the day, Reymundo, told me of his plan for the chicken to give her time and space to recuperate.  He would enclose her in the chicken coop's garden, when she could forrage and walk and not be bothered by the rooster's amorous outbursts while she recuperates and grows back her feathers.