The raccoons came to the 99 Retreat. I didn't see it. I almost wish I had — not because I wanted to, but because not seeing it leaves a shape in the air that the mind keeps trying to fill in.
I found Lucy on one part of the property. I carried her to another part, and we gave her a small ceremony — the kind you give a creature who bossed you around every morning and earned the right to be sent off proper. We cremated her there. The smoke went up gentle. Nobody said much.
Betty we couldn't bring back. We found her later, way back in the woods, and we let nature take its course the way nature has been taking its course since long before any of us showed up with a coop and a name for it. I told her she was a good hen. I meant it.
The Cluckshack isn't the same. We cleaned it out. We did the careful, ordinary work of erasing the worst of it. And still — Heather goes in there. Every day she walks the doorway, stands inside, and cries. Not for long. Just long enough to say I noticed. Then she leaves.
She won't sleep there anymore. She has moved herself, without asking permission, onto the porch of the Soul Cloth Sanctuary — our walk-in art gallery at the Cat Nap Inn. That's where she lives now. A widowed hen on the porch of an art gallery. If that isn't a Heart of Care sentence, I don't know what is.
She stopped laying eggs. Chickens grieve. People forget that, or never knew it in the first place, but they do. The body knows. The body says not today, not while it hurts like this, and it keeps saying it until something shifts. I'm not rushing her. Heather will tell us when she's ready.
Everybody at the Cat Nap Inn and the 99 Retreat has been quieter. The honey badger and Jesse James walk the fence line angrier than usual. We don't like the raccoons. They are masked bandits, and that's the kindest thing I can say about them this week.
So this one's for Betty and Lucy. For the eggs we won't get and the bossing-around we'll miss and the soft weight of them in our hands. And for Heather, who is doing the bravest thing a chicken can do: staying. Choosing a new porch. Crying in the old doorway and then walking out of it.
Rest easy, girls. The Cluckshack remembers you. The Sanctuary holds Heather now.
Keep the porch lit, the chickens fed, and the art table stocked.
Heart of Care runs on stubborn hope, kibble, hen scratch, and glue sticks. If a story landed for you, a small tip helps keep the Cat Nap Inn, the 99 Retreat, and the Soul Cloth Sanctuary going. Every dollar lands directly on the porch.
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