Oh my dear cheeky girl, Chickpea. What a troublemaker she was, but she will be terribly missed.

On Saturday night, our little Chickpea and another chicken (either Diva or Eggplant, we don’t know yet), were taken by a fox. We got the news the next day from our neighbour, who looks after our chickens while we are in Berlin. I definitely feel a sense of guilt for having animals when we are not there every day to personally look after them. We won’t be getting any more chickens unless we have someone living full time at Datscha Fröhden.

Of course the fox had to choose the best chickens to eat. First it took Pumpkin, and now it took her best friend, Chickpea, the girl with the biggest personality.

Chickpea had some sass. She would be the first one to approach you and follow you for food. She would jump for food and had no problem jumping into your lap or the table to get her beak into some human food. If you were weeding, she would come and look for bugs right next to you. She would get into the house any time we left the door open and managed to dig up and eat the little seedlings that we were growing. If the gap under our gate wasn’t blocked, or if the door managed to blow open, she would be outside straight away and in front of our house, eating all the weeds growing there.

She would allow me to pick her up and cuddle her for a long time. She would even tolerate strangers patting her. She was definitely the friendliest of all our chickens and the one with the most distinct personality. Observing Chickpea showed you that chickens really do have a mind of their own. They’re capable of understanding, in some way, the world around them.

Pumpkin’s death shock me and made me cry for two days. In some ways, it prepared me for Chickpea’s death. I’ve surprisingly taken the news okay. I shed a few tears but only for a minute. While Pumpkin was my favourite at the time, we got to know Chickpea for a few months longer. In that time, we really got to see her personality come out and we became deeply attached to her; she was the chicken that interacted the most with people. She wasn’t at the top of the pecking order, but in our eyes, she really was the leader of the pack.

Pumpkin and Chickpea <3