An ode to Stomps

This has been a week of goodbyes- goodbye, to many of our clients till January, goodbye, to some of our clients for regular visits entirely, and goodbye to the absolute bastard of a chicken, Stomps.

Eric, if you are reading this, that scar on my elbow is from your fence last month. Animates Khandallah, if you are reading this, I am sorry that this photo was taken with your “No photos allowed sign” visible and ignored in the background. This is the only decent photo I have of Stomps except the one further down.

We have had to suspend all services in the Hutt. VGG walks a really fine line, more of a razor sharp edge, where we pay living wage as a minimum, and do our best to be affordable for our clients. I have only taken on clients in the Hutt for selfish social reasons (one has been a client since a month after we began, 11 years ago), and the travel cost has been exorbitant at my end, a cost I didn’t feel willing to pass on to clients. So. Back to basics. Limit our client pool again. Keep it reasonable with clients and also with our own internal budget.

A theme that came through with the goodbyes was how rough of a year it has been- layoffs, reapplying for the same role again to the same wage but double the responsibility. Survivors guilt in multiple forms. Caring for disabled whanau and accepting that some things will not get less rough for a while.

A while ago manager Ray said to me, while gesturing to the wider world, “they have no idea. They haven’t even thought about it, it hasn’t affected them,” and what he meant, was that while everyone has their internal struggles, the rest of the world continues to see a decent, well put together human. It’s comforting to know that internal struggles rarely equate to external judgement but the internal burden also has you feeling much less seen sometimes.

Enter Stomps.

Stomps was acquired three years ago, from a house in Stokes Valley alongside three other chickens. She was referred to as “the bitch.” She’d peck ya. She was also terrified of you, and everything else. But she would stick around briefly, to peck you, before trying to run as quickly as she could to the other side of her travelling box.

Stomps loved to make some noise, and when I lived in Island Bay she learnt that if she stood on the roof of the henhouse, her squawks would echo against the valley and double. So she would squawk a lot. If there was trouble (hi, I am trouble, me the person who scrubs the poo out of her bedroom), she would make as much noise and bluster as possible. She would also develop Heavenly Creatures-esque relationships with other chickens and follow her chosen trouble maker around to commit atrocities.

I have to emphasise that the other chickens will eat out of the palm of my hand. Stomps would jump up a tree and alert the flock that I am a serial killer. She was impossible to catch.

She would get so upset that she would end up gasping for air, having voided her lungs so repeatedly, and run so fast. So a gasping Stomps was not uncommon. It was quite the sight, she looked like a marathon runner after the finish line.

Until I saw The Lump last month.

The lump was below her beak, and impacted her food and air intake. When she drank, she’d spill it all over herself because of the lump. But she was happy, and uncatchable anyway.

I know the Pet Rule: if they are unwell, they will wait till the vet closes. So in preparation for the upcoming holidays, I took Stomps to the vet. I had to catch her when she was asleep. She did not make any noise the next day.

$450 later (!!) wee Stomps was awaiting test results. She perked up a lot and enjoyed her new eating area (raised so the lump was less bothersome).

Stomps enjoying her raised feeding platforms yesterday. A thousand thanks to Gerri, who had given them to me a few days prior and did not make a peep when I told her that the vet cost $450- she probably drew blood but she bit her tongue!

She Chickened about, and ran with the flock. But she was skinny, so I went to catch her and hand feed her after dinner. Stomps let me catch her. She was furious about it. She encouraged me to push down on her lump so she could breathe a bit better. And then with a hideous furore combined with her desire for both hugs and violence, Stomps ran off to die. Then rolled back and asked for some help. Then ran off. Then asked to be picked up again. And so on, and so on, until we had to help her along.

Stomps was an absolute shit head of a chicken. I once saw her run straight up a 2m concrete wall so she could get into her coop without having to touch me. When her best friend liked making noise, Stomps made a hell of a lot of noise. When her new best friend was an escape artist, I suddenly had two escape artists. If one of the chickens took a liking to me, she bullied the heck out of it. Once she busted down two fences so she could cross the garden and beat up our new rescue chickens (who were not making noise, not visible to her, but were in a bad way and clinging to life). All I ever did was give her warm mash for Winter and corn ice blocks in Summer, and that chicken would have dispatched me in my sleep if she could.

But I think Stomps had been sick for far longer than she let on, and she was so violent when we caught her today that we wondered if we had accidentally killed her somehow.

Now, I know you guys aren’t (mostly) violent, or (mostly) too noisy, or (mostly) thinking about dispatching me in my sleep, so maybe you don’t have a lot in common with Stomps, a chicken so aggressive she started growing spurs.

But I do know you probably had a bloody hard year, with a busy and stressful December that is not yet halfway through.

So please bury your own version of Stomps this weekend, and plant something nice over it, and let all of that stress decompose into the earth where it is no longer able to bother you. And if you have a person like my Max, who killed Stomps in the best way he could just to make my load a little lighter, go make them a cup of tea with a biscuit the way they like, scoff at least five biscuits yourself while waiting for the jug to boil, and have a peaceful weekend.

Some gardening stuff

From now until the end of December, I am planting more-

• Zucchini, cucumber

• Tomatoes

• Lettuce, herbs, basil

• Onions

• Beets, silverbeet

• And any flowers I can find.

Can I also recommend that you-

• Water your houseplants, they thirsty, and give them a liquid feed too,

• Make sure nothing in a pot is roasting in the heat- put a saucer under it and fill it up

• Put more liquid fert on the plants in flower

• Stand on something that will assist you with a good echo, and shout really loud in a deeply accented voice so no one will associate it with you

Hugs

Zoe (and the team, who are about to find out that the pain in the ass chicken did not make it).