Death and the chickens

If I had known there would be so much death involved with chickens, I doubt I would have let my oldest daughter get mixed up with them.
She was 10, I think, when my husband and her unexpectedly brought home that very first box of six yellow, fluffy chicks from the feed store.
"Mom, don't be mad," she said, as my husband stood there with hiding something behind his back, even though those chicks were cheeping loud enough to be heard from the driveway. My husband said she had named all of them before he had even paid for them.
She was smiling and so full of excitement, how could I say no?
But a week later, that excitement was replaced with utter grief when one of those fragile chicks just up and died on her.
She was inconsolable and there wasn't anything I said that made her feel any better.
It was the first time she really felt the loss that comes with death, I think.
I think, when my mother-in-law passed away after a long illness, our daughter thought of her death in the same way any 6-year-old does: "Grandma's not here now."
But this time, four years later, death was more real for my daughter.
At 10, something she had bonded with, fed and cleaned up after and held, had become a a stiff, fluffy corpse.
So we buried that little chick under a tree in the backyard, holding our own dignified "Mass of chicken burial" for it.
That has become our grieving process when we find a dead chicken. I would hear a sudden onslaught of tears or scream of horror. Then whomever found the chicken would come to me and confirm my suspicions. I'd remove the dead hen and put her in a plastic grocery bag, tie the ends. Dig the hole. Get the chicken. Both daughters, there is a sisterly-sharing of grief, stand by and watch while I bury the chicken. One of them will say "she was a good hen" or something like that, and that's it.
Who knew a chicken's life could be so nasty, brutish and short?
Last night, we came home from delivering eggs to a customer and my husband was standing in the yard next to the pen where my daughter keeps her bantam brown Cornish rooster and 3 hens. He looked at the car, looked at the ground, looked back at us. I knew something was wrong.
One of her Cornish hens was dying. Who knows why? Sometimes, a chicken will be walking around the yard, scratching for bugs one day and the next day stop eating then the day after that, it's dead.
The Cornish are the sweetest birds. They walk right over to us if we are sitting outside. They are curious. Docile. Beautiful.
My oldest daughter knelt to the ground and gently stroked the dying hen's feathers.
"It's ok," she said.
"You're gonna go to a better chicken pen now," said my youngest daughter.
I held the dying bird as my oldest and her dad put together a wooden crate with straw in the garage so the bird wouldn't have to be exposed to whatever might be out roaming during the night.
She sat with it for awhile. Then came inside and got ready for bed.
I don't have a provacative thought here that leaves this story in a tidy little package.
The hen died.
My daughter is sad.
She lost a sweet, gentle bird that had shown well for her at the Farm Show in January.

I guess we all just move on.