Executioner again

Today was not a good day.  The vet went ahead with the X-rays that I authorized.  The results seemed to rule out water belly as the issue although we already sort of knew that since neither of us were able to extract fluid.  What the vet did see is what looked like possible egg fragments floating around which is a sign of egg peritonitis.  Basically what can happen is an egg ruptures inside the bird and the contents floating around inside quickly cause infection which can cause among other things, swelling in the abdomen.

For Cupcakes swelling to be as big as it was this probably was going on for awhile.  The vet said that a bird can still lay eggs with this condition, something that didn’t make sense to me at first, since Cupcake popped one out yesterday.  So with this information in hand I asked for options, none of which were good.

She said she could try to operate on the bird and clean her out but she said the odds of success were not good.  She then said we could try oral antibiotics for two weeks to see if it knocks back the infection which was already clearly well advanced.  If we did that she said we should keep Cupcake isolated and under a heat lamp full time which sounded logistically impossible.  We didn’t talk about option 3 yet, putting Cupcake down.

I thought out loud to the vet, saying that none of the treatment options she was providing me sounded like they had a probable outcome of success.  Despite that I hung up the phone after telling her we would try the antibiotics.  In the moment sentencing Cupcake to death, who still was alert, eating, and even gave us an egg the previous day, seemed like too harsh and too hasty of a decision.  Of course dollars and cents were factored into this as well since just getting to this point cost a few hundred dollars in diagnostics.

So after hanging up I texted Cindy what was up.  She was firmly in the camp that the humane thing to do was to put Cupcake down.  Obviously the bird was suffering but still, it is/was very hard for me to be ok with putting a pet to sleep that seemed totally fine only a handful of days ago.  However as I thought about it more and asking Cupcake to endure isolation and more misery for a treatment plan that had a very low probability of ultimate success just didn’t make a lot of sense if I stepped out of the circle of strong emotion I was feeling about the situation.  I told Cindy I would make the call.

I called the vet back and told her after some more consideration we felt it was best to put Cupcake to sleep.  I repeated back to her that it seemed like any option she had was not likely to succeed.  Later when I looked up egg peritonitis I saw it is almost always fatal, unless caught very early.  This obviously was not caught early.  The vet said she would follow my directive.  As I hung up the phone I again felt like an executioner, like I gave up on giving Cupcake a chance, no matter how small it was.  I tried to keep my mind busy as possible to keep from thinking about what I just set in motion.

I left work early to pick up Cupcake’s body before the vet closed.  I had a hard time thanking the staff for offering their condolences without my voice cracking.  Part of me felt silly for getting so emotional about the loss of a chicken but it is a track record that has been well established.  Once I got her still body out to the truck I lost it for a few minutes, crying in waves.  I just felt terrible for my part in all of this. Now yes I do realize in the big picture that Cupcake enjoyed a pretty stellar existence by chicken standards her entire life.  But even with all that I do/have done for the birds, I still felt responsible, like I failed her.  That feeling of failure is something I just don’t deal with well.

When I got home Cindy did her best to console me which I appreciated.  When I buried Cupcake in far rear reaches of the property the tears once again flowed freely.  It’s such an act of finality.  With as many birds as I have buried at this point you would think I would have built up more of an emotional callous but nope, every time, it just wrecks me.

I am going to miss seeing Cupcake running up to be first in line for any attention I was providing.  She was a beautiful bird with a personality.  She was always the most broody of our hens, sitting on eggs for hours because her instinct to want to have babies was so strong.  She was still doing this, despite her age.  We just had to separate her a few weeks ago during a broody episode.

I just have to do my best to focus on the good life she enjoyed, the good feelings and smiles she brought into our lives and the fact that her sudden but serious suffering is now at an end.  As I tamped the soil with one final pat of the shovel I told Cupcake one last time that Daddy loved her…..