There's a particular kind of heartbreak that comes with losing the one you least expected to lose. Cheeky wasn't the loudest hen or the one strutting at the top of the pecking order. She was the small one, the timid one, the Olive Egger who never even got around to laying an egg. Her person came home from lunch, saw she wasn't there, and knew something was off. By the time they found her, she was still warm. That detail, the warmth, is the cruelest part. It makes the loss feel less like a goodbye and more like a missed chance to have been there, to have done something, to have held her just a little closer.
We've all had a Cheeky. The one who didn't fit the mold, who didn't hit the milestones her sisters hit, who just quietly went about her business of dust bathing, scratching in pebbles, and making you fall for her without making a fuss. She had fowl pox months ago and pulled through, which makes this feel even more unfair. You don't expect the survivor to be the one who leaves first. And it stings a little extra that there aren't even photos of her alive. That's the part that gets us. Not because a photo would change anything, but because it's a reminder that we often don't capture the everyday moments until they're gone. We're too busy living them, and then they're just memories we can't pull up on our phones.
If a reader came to us with this story, here's what we'd say: don't let anyone tell you it's "just a chicken." Cheeky was your first favorite. She was from your first flock. That's a big deal. She may have been at the bottom of the pecking order, but she was a trooper. She ate her black soldier fly larvae, she dug in her hay, she lived her life on her own terms. And you gave her that. You gave her a place where she could be small and timid and still be loved exactly as she was. That's not nothing. That's everything.
So what do you do now? You grieve her, honestly and without shame. You let yourself feel the shock and the sadness, because that's what love looks like when it has nowhere to go. And then, when you're ready, you remember that Cheeky got to spend her whole life being your little chicken friend. She didn't know she was supposed to lay eggs or climb the social ladder. She just knew she had a warm place, good food, and someone who noticed when she wasn't there. That's the legacy. The next time you toss out some scratch or watch your other girls dust bathe, take a second to smile at the memory of the one who taught you that sometimes the quietest souls leave the biggest mark. Hold onto that. It's the only way to keep her close.
