Vegetarian Patty

Oh my poor Patty...it was fate...destiny...what happened to her. I went out to sea for 8 days for work...no contact with the family. When I got home, I had been off the boat no more than 20 minutes when she texted me that she had to tell me something...and did I want her to tell me then or when I got home. Good Lord...things were racing through my head...Mariah got in trouble, Bubba got away and was hit by a car, the barn collapsed, she enjoyed her free time so much she was moving on....I had no idea...but I sure as shit didn't want to wait till I got home.
"One of the chickens died..." she had texted. And then the texts started coming one right after the other..."It was the speckled one"..."She hadn't been doing well"...
Before I had left one of our Speckled Sussex who I named "Alice" (after the vamp in Twilight duh) hadn't been doing well. It seemed she hadn't adjusted to the coop very well, and was just lethargic. She ate and drank with the others, but didn't seem to want to join them in their clucky games. We had big rocks in the corners of the coop holding down the linoleum, and every time we went to check on them she was roosting on a rock, all puffed up...so I figured she was broody...early puberty maybe. While I was out to sea, when P went down to the barn she was just laying in the corner on her rock. The next day she came down she was dead, in the middle of the coop, under the heat lamp. The chickens had taken it upon themselves to peck all of the feathers and skin off her head. Now Patty can kill any bug for me, and can scoop our dogs kennel or the cat boxes without batting an eye. But the sight of Alice was too much for her...She still won't talk about it, but after much gagging she managed to get Alice in a bag and into the garbage. She is still traumatized, and has refused to eat meat...especially chicken, since I got home. Hopefully that will eventually change....kind of hard to run an organic farm and not be able to feed her some of the fruits of our labor. My poor Patty. :(
RIP Alice...we are down to 25 chickens now.