We have another chicken with ‘hemorrhoids,’ which isn’t really hemorrhoids but merely something that I assume to be equivalent in chickens. This time it’s with our rare and exotic chicken, Doris. At least that is what I call her.

When we ordered our chickens back in August we purchased 25 baby chicks and they threw in one special surprise one, the rare and exotic one. She’s prominently white with little black specs all over her backside and I really love her. She has personality and she’s bigger then most the others.

The other one who had something similar never made it. I did everything in my power to fix her and I thought it was even getting better.  Then I made the mistake of putting her back with the others after about two and a half weeks but since it had been that long, they didn’t accept her back in and started attacking her. When I went out to check on the chickens that afternoon, I found her curled up in a little ball under one of the tires of the chicken coop shaking and bloody. She let me  scooped without a fight and she curled up in my arms, barring her head in the nook of my armpit as I carried her back to her safe little coop in the garage. From there I was forced to decide what to do next. And it broke my heart.

Who am I to decide what is right anyway?

In the end I made the hard decision that she was suffering and keeping her around was selfish on my part. We couldn’t keep her in the garage for the rest of her life and had nowhere else to put her.

When I got home from work that night, she was gone and I was informed that the next time I had to do it. We are either in it together, teammates,  or not at all is what David said. It’s only fair. It’s part of life out here and part of the lifestyle of having farm animals. They get sick, they die. Sometimes at the hand of their owner because above all else, you’re the only one who can make the right decision for them. And sometimes it just sucks.

I’m really not so sure I am cut out for this. I mean, I am a girl who will go as far as to apply Preparation H to a chicken’s butt to save its life. I am the girl that chases after her cats as they run away determined, with bird in mouth.  I’ve been known to rescue stray dogs, and not so stray dogs, and I had to stop volunteering at a shelter because I kept bring them home with me. I am the girl who has conversations with the goats as they walk by my side in the pasture. I am the girl who loves so deeply I’d go to great lengths to save their lives.

So how am I suppose to detach myself from that part of me, my favorite part of me?

Will I ever really know what is the right decision? Will I always wonder if there was something more I could have done?

Will I ever get use to having to make that decision?