Bye Sis...

Yeah, we lost our little buff cochin bantam hen, who was the surviving identical twin of the pair we called The Chicken Sisters. While they were both alive we just called them The Chicken Sisters (after one of my daughter's books) since they were freakin' identical and we could NOT tell them apart. They did everything together--ate, slept, foraged during them day--even brooded some baby chicks together! They were never more than about 6 inches apart and did that weird twin 'making the same movements at the same time' thing.

As they got older they naturally tapered off laying eggs. The first twin died of natural causes back in 2006, of old age we thought. We had gotten them as adults back in 2001, I figured they were at LEAST 1-2 years old then, and they were wild little girls, too. Amiable enough, but NOT lap chickens and hard to catch, and bitched a blue streak when you DID catch them. Never mean to their flockmates or us, though.

When the first twin died we expected that Sis, which is what we took to calling the surviving Sister, would miss her, but we weren't sure how much. She obviously mourned and missed her sister, but handled it well enough.

Since then she's kept to herself, and has been the grand old dignified dame of the flock. Then suddenly in 2008 she came into lay again, laying eggs for a few weeks, cavorting shamelessly with the boys and earning herself a trip to the vet for egg binding when she got one stuck. She was too old for that nonsense, and we told her so. We did manage to successfully incubate and hatch two of her eggs, however, and she has one daughter still with us today from 2008.

We've had her in the last couple of days since it's been so ungodly hot, and she was clearly suffering from the heat. We knew she was on her way out--she wasn't sick, just old and worn out, poor sweetie. Last night she went peacefully in her sleep.

We'll miss you, Sis.