My father and I put up a fence this weekend, we did it while it was raining. We did it because the chickens were roosting in the barn, that was a problem because I’m moving my shop into the barn, I’m moving my shop into the barn because I’d like to turn that place into an apartment to ease my mortgage some. 

The fence is six feet high, and that’s meant to be high enough to keep chickens in, but this morning, one got out. It was Annabell, one of our favorite chickens, and certainly our most adventerous bird. 

The choice was obvious, we had to clip her wings. 
We can’t rebuild the fence on her account, and we can’t have her off tempting the other chickens to flee, and we can’t accept her dying out there somewhere on her own.

I care a great deal about these chickens and when we have to cull one because they’re mean or because they’re sick or because we’d like to eat them, it’s not easy, but it is important. Wing-clipping seems a cruel thing, a bird’s meant to fly, even a flightless one that just sorta flaps over fences has a strange grace, and I hate to diminish the freedom of a thing. 

But freedom likely means only a little while being devoured by a coyote on the other side of the fence from the only friends and family you’ve ever known. 

I felt the sadness and the injustice of clipping her wings, a process that is painless to her, at arm’s length. I knew it was a sad thing that we were doing, but it was so obviously necessary for her greater good that I didn’t really feel the sadness, I just observed it. 

Her feathers will grow back and we’ll have to do it again next spring, but I bet you we’ll have forgotten and she’ll have a sunny day of liberty before too long.