Citizens of the Earth...

"Don't let is bring you down.

It's only castles burning,

Find someone who's turning,

And you'll come around."

-Neil Young

oooooohmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm................ shanti..........shanti.......... shanti.........


 Life has taken us for a few whirls and spins lately, apart from the usual.
Landon and I have been faced with death more in the past two weeks than possibly our entire lives combined. I've always been quite cozy with the thought of death. Not that I'm morbid or dark or think of death often, but that death is simply a part of life, something that is inevitable.

Many of us choose an idea or story to believe in, as to what will happen to us after our death.
Some may choose to put their faith into the idea of heaven, that their afterlife will be better...
Others may choose to believe in reincarnation, that their next life will be better...

I choose... Well, I choose not to choose.  Why should I come to a final decision on this matter, after all, I will never really know.  So why focus on it? Why worry myself with my "next" life? If such a thing even exist... It seems to me that so many people in western culture devote so much of their lives to the act of worrying about death and whether or not they will be damned to a bad place or sent to a place with golden streets for eternity... It is of my belief that we deserve neither. And what's so great about golden streets anyways?

I suppose that I am rambling on and should get to the point, if I have one...
The point is, that we should stop mourning and worrying over death.  It's natural, and in a way, it can be beautiful.  When I imagine dying, I like to think that I will be thrown into the ground. No casket, just my body deep in the ground for all the living organisms to feed off of. The beauty in that is that my death is feeding life.  It seems to be one beautiful circle to me, but that's just me...
But you see, my view of dying is so simple. You can feel sad about it, but really it's just part of what happens here on earth. And once we come to terms with it, and learn not to be fearful all the time, we can begin to enjoy LIFE.  Just living, breathing and BEING. 

When you begin to really live life. You realize just how precious and amazing it is.
You understand how easily it can all go away.


Lately that understanding has become a bit more clear than usual.
Two weeks ago our second chicken was killed. This time by a possum (the first one by a fox, I suspect)  It's quite a gruesome scene to encounter and really turns my stomach into knots.
I'm not sure which is worse, hearing your chickens scream and knowing that one is being killed or actually seeing it dead, head in the possums mouth.  It was a strange night.

And now, just two weeks later, we are dealing with a mice problem at the bakery. They've came and decided to set up camp. We had no idea what they or we were in for... Assuming there were only a few (and having no choice but to do this) we set up traps.  I won't say how many we caught, but let's just say it is quite a bit and it is a disturbing thing to do.  The last thing I want to do is provide (unknowingly) a home for mice and then massacre them... But realistically, the bakery could be shut down- and at the moment, that is our 'livelihood'.  This past Saturday Landon checked the traps and found a mice that had his leg broken in the trap but was still alive.  I'm sure you know what came next... he had no choice but to kill it.  Well, he did have a choice... The other option was to let it run around injured with three good legs and continue on it's journey... But once again, we are in a terrible situation, which I wish had never happened... But it is happening.

Killing that mice took a lot out of Landon. I know that is was a very difficult thing to do.
(Here I am saying this, personally knowing people in the military that have killed human beings)
But for us, killing a cockroach feels weird. You may be thinking, "Well, you were going to kill your chickens, anyways."    Yes, I was- but I was going to eat them too. And it would have been very quick, without any stress beforehand.  And it's a damned shitty feeling when you've been taking care of these animals and feeding them everyday, and something comes and takes that away from you and your left with nothing.

The possum scared the hell out of the chicken, and killed it. That left the chicken very stiff, and we could not eat it. We cleaned it and left it to the dog and cat- who also didn't care too much for it.
Two weeks after the possum came (in the night), on the same day that Landon had to kill the mice, we came home to chicken feathers covering the entire yard. We tracked them and found our first chicken injured and stuck under some brush. Her leg was badly hurt and she couldn't walk on it at all, we checked under her wings and a portion of skin was missing... A fox had tried to take her, but to no success.  I searched for the other hen by tracking feathers, which led me back into the woods around a series of fox holes... So, the other chicken was lunch. 

I feel so naive, only being suspicious of the creatures of the night and never considering that the fox would come out during the day. So there you have it, one injured chicken left. Too injured to pay money at the vet and too injured to allow to live (and be terrified alone in the coop at night)...
So, as you may have guessed... Landon had to end her life, and this time, we buried her.
We both cried a lot that day, and it's strange the way we do that.
I have never seen Landon cry like that before.
There were so many emotions and it's hard to explain the way we felt, we weren't crying because of emotional attachment to the chickens, but because of what they had to go through. One by one being taken away by creatures with sharp teeth.  I am forgiving to those creatures, because I know they just want food- but Landon feels a lot of anger towards them that is hard to make disappear. 

I tell myself that this isn't just our territory. This is the home of the fox, the possum and the coyote too. And we are all in this together, we are all just trying to live and survive.
Which is why it's such a strange thing to deal with. Those chickens were ours, but they weren't really.
Ultimately, nothing belongs to us. The land does not belong to us, no matter how many sheets of paper says that it does. We are simply citizens of the earth, we are ALL playing the same game- whether we choose to accept that notion or not.


And so I chant, Ohm...shanti...shanti...shanti
My prayer to the universe