Return of the Fox

The day after Hercules disappeared and the fox was seen rolling near the rooster's feathers, we saw the the fox again. The kids were eating their breakfast. I had gone upstairs for something. My oldest daughter came racing up the stairs to announce that, "That fox is out there again!" 

He was not in the same location as the day before, but further up the ridge and farther from our house, but he was in the middle of the hay field and he was clearly eating something. I snapped a few pictures from the master bathroom upstairs and from the dining room, in part because I have a small zoom lens on my camera and wanted to see if I could tell what he was eating, and partly from habit.

As he ate, turkey vultures soared and glided high over him and my children smudged the windows in order to gawk at him. He took his time, starting by standing over whatever it was and tearing it apart, and ending by sitting down with his back to the house, hunched up and munching. 

I kept thinking that I was seeing feathers, but he was awfully far away. Maybe I was imagining things. It was painful to watch him eat, even though his back was toward the house most of the time, because this time as I watched him, I wasn't just marveling at the wild thing so close. I wasn't spellbound by the unusualness or by his strange beauty. 

As the saying goes, I felt like my face was being rubbed in it, and I was mad about having to imprison my hens in chew-proof hardware cloth 24/7. Also, this time my children were thinking about a dead rooster being torn apart, and they weren't happy to see him either. So I felt badly also because of their indignant voices and sad faces.

When he was through, the fox trotted to the same "island of trees" in the hay field that he had disappeared into the day before. He didn't do any rolling in the grass or scratching this time. But he did lick his chops repeatedly (in seeming satisfaction.) And he did glance right at me before ducking into the copse of trees, as if to "thumb his nose" at me on his way by.

My head was full of questions. Had he killed the rooster for fun when he wasn't hungry and stashed him until the next morning? It was possible. Foxes have been known to do that. He couldn't have left his kill in the field or the turkey vultures and other vermin would have scavenged his leftovers. But why would he drag the carcass out into the open to eat it? Was he eating something else? Would we be seeing him regularly now? 

That very day my oldest son started clearing the bushes beneath the poplar trees where we had seen the fox retreat both days. He worked hard and fast, turning an oasis for wildlife into stumps and stacks of brush. He labored for an hour here and there for several days in thorny bushes and even during light rains, and I let him. 

Usually, I don't like clearing. I hate killing living things, even vegetation. But the fact that multiple coyotes could lurk so close to the kids, whose swing set was so near, disturbed me. The fact that dear, turkey, and squirrels also shelter there, means that it is probably crawling with ticks. And on at least one occasion, a stranger's truck had made the long trip up our driveway, turned around, and then paused for a long while out of sight behind those bushes doing who knows what before leaving. Also, the bushes were encroaching upon the hayfield. We lost more and more hay to them every year. It was even difficult to mow between them and the board fence last year.

Besides, the boy needed it. I think it was a way for him to deal with his grief, to hack away at the limbs of invasive species (autumn olives, Russian olives, and multi-flora roses) that grab his sleeves and tear his skin as he passes them on the mower. He's seen a lot of death in his short life... cats crushed under garage doors, cats so recently run over by vehicles that their tails were still twitching... Upon returning from vacation, years ago when he was still quite small, he ran to visit the chickens right away. He found one of our two hens dead from dehydration and overheating because the person we had arranged to let them out and feed them had neglected to do so while we were gone. During a game of hide-and-seek three years back he had found the young goat, Suzie Cubed, hanging dead from the high hay rack mounted on the stall wall. In some freak accident, she had managed to jump into it and to get her neck stuck between the bars as she struggled to get back out so that she broke her neck. And these are just some of the things I know about and remember. Rural life can be rough, the poor boy! 

Speaking of rough, I didn't venture out to see the remains of the fox's meal this time. I'm not that morbid. If it was Hercules, it was. And if it wasn't, it wasn't. The realities of farm living are hard on me sometimes too.

The Death of Hercules

Well, I had figured it would happen sometime. We have so many wild animals about that I'm surprised Hercules lived this long. But after months of roosting on the stall walls in the barn and roaming freely all day, announcing loudly and proudly his location, we had begun to think of him as a permanent fixture (see Hercules is Banished). One night, during evening prayers, my five year old even prayed that he would go away (see The Killer Roo). In fact, I almost advertised him on craigslist yesterday. 

But today he met his demise. Here's how it went down. It is a sunny day in the lower 60's. We were all sitting at lunch, and had the window open in order to hear the spring peepers, the wind, and to smell the spring soil. Suddenly, my seven year old stood up, pointed out the window and shouted, "I see a fox!"

If you look closely you will see Hercules' tail feathers sticking up from the hay to the foxes left.

So I walked to the window to take a look, and sure enough there was a fox in the hay field at about 12:30 pm rolling about...

and scratching. 

The children clamored at the window to get a better look at him. I retrieved my camera to snap a few photos, which I took through two panes of glass since the lower sash was raised. He seemed completely unaware of us. "Does he have hydrophobia?" I wondered aloud.

Eventually, he trotted over to the copse of trees in the hay field that lies just on the other side of the fence from the swing set. He did a turn and then ducked into the tangle of autumn olives, Russian olives, and multi-flora roses.

When I was looking at the fox through the lens of my camera earlier, I thought I had seen the legs of another animal in the air, so I scanned that area again with my camera to see if there were two foxes out there. Then it hit me. I hadn't seen the legs of another fox lying on its back in the hay. I had seen feathers! They were the long tail feathers of the seemingly invincible Hercules, stuck in the hay and waving in the wind!

With my 2 year old buckled back in his chair at the table and left with my sixteen year old, I went out to see if Hercules was still alive and in distress. All I found were three piles of feathers.... lots and lots of feathers, all seemingly black belly and tail feathers. I didn't see any white feathers at all, although there was some gray down. 

I took a quick turn through the barn and made sure the fox hadn't been digging about the chicken's hoop run, and to see if an injured Herc had returned home. But I saw no signs of digging or the rooster, and I returned to my waiting children. We decided that the fox must have been rolling about and scratching in order to remove the feathers from his coat. The kids think he took Hercules to the head of the little waterfall below the upper barn and ate him there, then trotted out to where we saw him in order to clean off. 

On one hand, I am relieved. The rooster had increasingly been a problem. He roamed all around the house, stalked my little boys, bothered my oldest when he fetched tools from the barn- And I'm glad that he went in a natural way, that my fed-up husband didn't have to dispatch him. But on the other hand, I am sort of sad too. It has been nearly a year that we've had him. I will miss his entertaining roosterish antics, if not his boisterous crowing or his fearsome foot fetish. 

He had a fantastic strut, 

the tallest comb, 

Here is his comb after roughing it in the barn, You can see the effects of frostbite. 

and the most glorious black, iridescent, and flowing tail feathers.

Now I definitely know what was taking my chickens last fall before I imprisoned them. If that fox took the meanest rooster at midday, then it surely could have taken Rusty the rooster or the other four hens who went missing. And it means I will never ever be able to let my girls roam freely. It also means that the lightweight, moveable run with aviary netting that I was thinking of building for the summer is out of the question. Foxes can even chew through chicken wire and most hardware cloth, the stinkers.  

Snowbird

A male robin has been frequenting the crabapple tree behind our house. 

This is what he looked like when he first showed up in January.

He clumsily eats crabapples when the grass is covered with snow 

(as it most often is.)

 When it is cold, he puffs himself up and hunkers down in the sun.

He chases off the white-breasted nuthatches, 

the black-capped chickadees, 

and the downy or hairy woodpeckers when he is near.  

And I've even seen him drive off another male robin.

 I'm not sure when he showed up, 

but since his favorite tree is right outside of our dining room, 

we see him a lot. 

I snapped my first picture of him in the middle of January. 

He doesn't sleep in the tree. 

Some days I never notice him out there. 

Some days he seems to be there all day. 

I'm hoping he has pegged the tree for a nesting site, 

but male robbins don't build nests, 

so perhaps the tree is just one of the look-out posts for his territory. 

Female robins are supposed to follow the males by only a few weeks, 

but although I've seen a flock of robins in the yard on one occasion 

since "our" robins arrival, 

none of them stayed. 

Perhaps the snow on the ground had something to do with that. 

Despite the thick blanket of snow outside, 

spring is definitely "just around the corner."

Our daffodils showed their green, spiky tops last December!

Already the days are longer 

and I must trudge out to the chicken coop earlier and earlier in the morning,

and I close the chickens up later and later each evening.

Already the moon rises big and round behind the barn 

instead of slipping up between the trees in the woods.

I long to hear the trilling of sandhill cranes as they fly over. 

I enjoy the honk of Canada geese down on the pond.

I like the loud chirping of incalculable spring peepers

and the return of birdsong.

I love spring flowers

But I do not look forward 

to the mucky swamp that our lawn will be when it thaws-

and my children will be clamoring to romp in it.

I do not look forward to the return of ticks.

The weeds, autumn olives, multiflora roses, and wild raspberries will take over again.

The tentacles of poison ivy will creep into the "yard."

And all too soon, mowing will begin again.

So I am satisfied to see small signs of spring, 

like "our" robin,

but I have no desire to hurry it along. 

Chicken Pickin'

As the screen door slammed behind me, the cold hit me like it was something hard. It made me inhale sharply, and then breathe shallowly.  My eyeballs hurt. The inside of my nose burned. My exposed cheeks soon felt stiff; they stung as if someone had slapped them.

The snow made a satisfying crunch under my feet as I clomped to the barn in my boots. My husband shoveled a path the whole way there. It was quite a treat not to have to march through the deep snow to the barn.

Children's trails criss-crossed the path. The marks of their boots, sleds, dragged shovels, and clumps of packed snow littered the otherwise smooth whiteness in zig-zag lines. They have wanted to play in the snow more than I have let them. The low temperatures and wind chills have restricted their time outside.

The wind rustled and rattled through the dead, bleached-brown beech and oak leaves that still clung tenaciously in the understory of the woods. The taller tree trunks swayed slowly. The sky above them was a muted blue, and the rising sun cast a rosy hue along the horizon.

A red tail hawk called as I rounded the corner of the pole barn. When I struggled to free the gate from the snow, where it had frozen, the raptor rose from along the back pasture fence and flew over the treetops with another characteristic screech. As I rounded the hoop house on my way to let out the chickens, I paused for a moment to watch its departure on slowly flapping, soundless wings.

The hens were clucking and complaining like old women. They brought me back to the task at hand. I could hear them scuffling in their impatience to leave the coop. With a great flapping, rustling of feathers, and squawking, they eagerly burst out of the pop-door as soon as I opened it.

I checked the plug on the heated waterer. I turned on the two heat lamps. I checked their feed. I counted them and looked them over. Two of them had tail feathers pulled. They need more room to roam so that they won't feather-pick. But when the weather warms enough to let them out again I will lose them by ones and twos to the hawks... 

and the foxes...

and the coyotes...

and the opossums...                                           and the raccoons....

and a host of other vermin. Such are the dilemmas I will face when the weather warms. In the meantime I will keep the woodpile stocked, keep the wood stove roaring, and hope that some solution presents itself.

Goodbye Rosie Roo

The bitter cold we have been experiencing has resulted in frozen eggs a few times. We hang two heat lamps in the run, but the attached coop is not electrified. When it is closed, the small space heats up with body heat, and the roosting birds are warm enough. The walls are doubled and the air inside of them acts as an insulator. But during the day, when the coop door is open so that the hens can access the nest boxes that hang off of the sides of the coop, the temperature inside the coop drops. 

Our hens have been resilient despite the frigid cold. The only odd behavior came from Rosie the rooster, the bantam who never finished his secondary molt. He would burrow into the bedding material in the run under the heat lamp and next to the feeder. It seemed to work for him. I worried some, but since he was a rooster, he was no longer allowed to be coddled in the house. 

Rosie this fall

Well, the other morning my husband tended the animals for me since he was going to drive the truck to work and we park it in the barn. And the poor bird had passed away, presumably from the cold, since he was frozen. He was on the bottom of the coop, where it is the coldest. I'm sure that if he was fully feathered he would have been fine because our large silver phoenix rooster, Hercules, has been fine roosting by himself in the big, drafty barn. And all the feathered hens were fine. Sigh.

So now we are down to one ruling rooster. This is good I guess, since there won't be any cock fights, as my brother-in-law kept teasing me about. But it is sad too. And I feel stupid for having fed him for three quarters of a year only to lose him. I'd never make it as a farmer. My husband informed me of this last night as I admitted my guilt about Rosie to him. I'm too soft-hearted, too generous, and too into doing things the "right" way. And that doesn't mean the way that makes the most money or is the easiest. It means the way that is best for the environment, given my circumstances, and the way that is inevitably the hardest. 

Hercules this past fall

I even feel guilty about an unwanted rooster free ranging (with supplemented feed), who has access to a heated waterer, has bedding to scratch in, and is roosting at will in the barn. (Where he is doing fine, by the way.) I feel guilty about an unwanted runt rooster dying of exposure to the cold after I'd nursed him back to health in my house on multiple occasions. I could never dispatch the runt pigs, butcher hens, or shoot the wounded-beyond-rehabilitation farm animal. I guess my female-ness is showing itself? Or maybe my relatively well-off position is? I guess I'd buck up if I had to choose between hungry kids or putting a hen in a killing cone. But we live in such a sanitized, wrapped in cellophane, never-see-the-butchering age... And I'm a product of it. I'm with my daughter. If I had to do the slaughtering, I might be a vegetarian. 

Killer Chicken

I have been feeling sorry for my rooster, Hercules. He roosts in the barn wherever he pleases now, but he no longer has the small space and accumulated body heat in the coop to keep him warm. (See my last post for an explanation.) I have been suffering from scruples about him, trying to figure out if he needs a separate house, if I should attempt to re-home him, or if he should be... ehem... dispatched. But I haven't had the time to make a snug house or build a new run. And I can't bring myself to kill him, despite knowing that it may be more humane than letting him get frostbite, which is inevitable. 

For some time now my son and husband have complained about Hercules. They fill in for me with animal chores sometimes and have reported being flown at, pecked, scratched, even having a leg clung to by him. Once my husband kicked him in self defense! At first I thought that it was a little bit humorous to feel threatened by a chicken because I had never experienced the terror myself. 

Hercules did do his strut and his funny one-wing-down, side-stepping shuffle with me. He did charge at me. But he only feinted. I figured that he did not see me as a competitor or a threat and was used to me, so I didn't worry about it too much. Mostly I've had too many other things to worry about.

But lately, Herc has been more and more aggressive towards me. I suppose he hasn't taken kindly to being banished from the chicken run. He's seen me enter to tend the food and water, and probably thinks that I have stolen his "girls." He has started seeing me as a "competitor." 

Now he lurks silently and flies out at me in a fury when I am off guard. He leaps at me, all flying feathers and thrashing wings, with his talons extended. He strikes at my feet and legs with his beak. He scratches with his legs. (Thankfully, his spurs are not fully formed yet!) And most recently, he flew at me feet first, clutched my pants with his claws, and pecked ferociously at my knee. Ouch! Now my husband is the one who thinks it is funny, since I sort of shrugged off his earlier complaints. And now I am always looking over my shoulder so as not to be caught off guard by "the killer roo." It makes my chore times much more unpleasant, and I don't like to be mildly bullied by a chicken.

As I contemplated the state of affairs tonight on the way back to the house from the barn, I remembered a story I was once told many, many years ago by a previous co-worker of mine. Let me relate it to you as I remember it, and as my imagination has embellished it over the years, because it relates to my future. And, frankly, it's a bit funny too. (I shall change my co-worker's name, for the sake of her privacy.) 

Jane was a horse lover. For as long as she could remember, she had always wanted a horse. In her youth she took riding lessons, and dreamed of the day that she would own her own horse. After college, when she was young and single and had been hired into a steady job, she saved up her money until she could buy a beautiful gelding. She lived in an apartment and didn't even own a car yet, but she scrimped and saved in order to board her horse at the most inexpensive place around at which to do so. 

Soon Jane learned why it cost less to board her horse at the stables she had chosen. An aggressive rooster had the run of the farm. It tormented all of the visitors. Soon she dreaded encounters with this flying ball of thrashing, sharp fury. She learned to only wear long pants and long sleeves when going to visit her horse. Then she took to wearing gloves.

The scratching, feathered ferocity always lay in wait for Jane, so it didn't stop there. Once the rooster landed on her head as she was bending over to muck her stall. He got his feet entangled in her hair, and gave her a sharp blow with his beak before she managed to get him off. After that, since Jane had bought a horse instead of a car and therefore traveled by moped, she began leaving her helmet on for protection when working in the barn, leading her horse out to pasture, or heading to the riding ring. Once safely outside of the range of the rooster's possessiveness, she would take off the helmet and hang it on a fence post until it was time to return to the stables. 

Finally, after so many scratches and attacks, tired of prying the raging rooster off of her leg, unable to carry the pitch fork or muck rake with her for defense from the motorcycle to the barn or from the motorcycle to the pasture, Jane began arming herself with a baseball bat, which she kept bungeed to the bike. It happened at first as an afterthought after softball practice, but soon is became a regular habit to carry it as a club of defense. Armed in such a way, with her riding boots, long pants, long sleeves, leather gloves, and motorcycle helmet on, Jane was once heading out from the parking area to bring her horse in from the pasture to the barn so as to curry him. Just as she bent over to duck under the electric fence, the sneaking rooster flew up from the rear and sank his talons into her derriere, clinging tightly, thrashing wildly, and gouging whatever he could with his sharp beak. Just as she instinctively swung wildly and blindly behind her with the ball bat, a sudden pain caused her to jerk herself inadvertantly upward. This brought her into contact with the live wire, which added extra ferocity to her swing.

Jane quickly lowered herself to break connection with the searing, numbing wire and tried to move forward, only to arch her back again in an involuntary response to a particularly sharp and dragging jab of the beast's hooked beak. Again this caused contact with the hot wire, and again she was jolted with the buzzing, fiery electricity as she swung. This time she made contact with the choleric chicken. 

For what seemed like many minutes, but what must have only been the matter of seconds, Jane was caught in this precarious position with the rooster firmly attached to her backside, the electric fence wires above her making contact off and on as she struggled to pry him off, strike him, or move out from under the fence. She gritted her teeth against the exploding pain and used all her willpower to hold still in a half-crouch under the wire. She took a split second to assess the situation. 

Her helmet screen had become fogged and splattered with perspiration, so she couldn't see well. Her breath was fast and hard, like Darth Vader on speed. She felt some blood trickle down her leg. A broad band on her back felt burned and tingling. Wait, was it her imagination or was that fiendish fowl flapping about with a little less vigor back there? 

Jane decided that this was her opportunity to be free of him. She lunged out from under the fence. Then quickly she rose and swung around with all of her force as she lashed out once more in desperation with the baseball bat. As she completed her swing, the rooster let go of his hold on her bottom and was flung with centrifugal force toward the fence. He grazed a wire for a moment, twitched with a sickening spasm, and then fell lifeless to the ground beneath the fence.

Jane inhaled sharply. She wrenched off her helmet and threw it down to get some air and a better view. She stood there in pain, panting. "Oh, no!" she thought. "I killed the damned thing!" She tossed aside the bat that she found herself still clutching tightly, tore off her gloves, threw them toward the helmet, and gingerly felt the back of her pants as she twisted round to view the damage. They were sticky with chicken dung, blood, and the mud and manure that had been on the rooster's feet. "He deserved it!" She thought to herself. 

But then a wave of worry passed over her when she realized that she would have to tell the owners of the farm that she had killed their rooster. Would they let her horse stay on or would they ask her to leave? Where else would she find a place to stable her horse for what she could afford? How would she pay to transport him? All of these thoughts raced through her head. She decided to get the ordeal over with right away. For one thing, she thought, maybe they would pity her in the bedraggled, beaten state she was in. 

As it turned out, the proprietors of the stables were very apologetic. In fact, they told her that they were actually relieved. "That infernal bird has tormented this place for far too long. We should have killed it long ago, but we didn't have the heart to. In fact, we ought to thank you!" 

As a token of their appreciation, and perhaps in an effort to keep her from suing them for damages, they gave her six months of stabling for free. The best part was that she could once again wear shorts, muck a stall without a motorcycle helmet on, and never had to be on the lookout for the tiny terror again. But it it took a while before she could sit down without wincing or could ride comfortably. 

And this folks, is the predicament that I am in. Much like the farm owners in the aforementioned story, I don't want to harm the feathered fowl that is slowly flowering into a full fledged fiend of frenzy. I don't want him to suffer by getting frost bite. But I also do not want him to tear up my hens, terrorize me while working, or worst of all- attack one of my small children. This is why I ordered all hens in the first place. Something will eventually have to be done.

Hercules is Banished

One evening, recently, I entered the chicken run to close up the attached coop. As usual, I hung up the food to keep rodents from eating the chicken feed. I checked the waterer, and noticed it was low. So I unplugged it. (It's a heated fountain.) I lugged it out of the hoop run, through the pasture gate, and over to one of the yard hydrants. When I prepared to wash and fill the canister, I noticed that it was covered with tiny splashes of blood. 

My heart stopped for a split second and my mind raced. I wondered if some vermin had dug their way in and harmed or killed a chicken. I had seen signs of digging on days when the ground was thawed a bit. I wondered if one of the birds had gotten injured and was cannibalized. None of the options seemed good.

When the reservoir was scrubbed and filled, I carefully flipped it over, so as not to spill it. Then I carefully lugged the heavy thing back to the hoop house. I leveled the waterer to prevent leaks, plugged it back in, and stood against the door, observing the birds and looking for signs of a scuffle or digging. I saw neither. All the birds seemed fine. The only thing that seemed odd was that Hercules, the biggest rooster, had pink saddle feathers. 

So I began to count. Five times I counted them, and each time I came up one short. I sighed. My heart sank. I prepared mentally to find a dead hen in the coop. Since the pop door on the coop is so low, and the coop so dark, I exited the run and walked around to the coop side. First I checked the nest boxes, thinking an injured bird might hunker down in a close, dark space. All four were empty. Then I unlatched and lifted off one side of the roof. All looked normal, except that there were small spatters of blood on the coop doors and walls.

Perplexed, I retraced my steps and walked into the hoop house again. When I counted again, I came up with the correct number. One of the hens must have hopped out of the coop just before I peered inside. 

Then my close inspections began, and I found that a big, reddish hen had bled at the base of her comb. Her feathers were spiky and wet there and where the blood had dripped onto her neck. The tiny splatters were probably from the dripping blood tickling and causing her to shake her head, which flung off some of the blood from her feathers as if from a paint brush. She was eating and moving about normally, so I let them all roost for the night and closed them up safely, as usual. 

I determined that the rooster, who was stained pink, was the culprit. He was rough with the "girls." And with the predator problems and the cold weather, they had been penned up, so they could not escape him. He often pecked the back of their heads fiercely when treading them, or nipped them and pinned them down while staying clamped on. 

So the next morning, when Hercules did his usual strutting and made his scuffling advances toward me, I opened the run door a crack and let him slip outside. The hen's wound was clearly better and the others were leaving her alone, so I completed my chicken chores and tended the goat. I put water and food out for the exiled rooster, but he was beside himself and paced the perimeter of the coop all day, crowing in what seemed like rage and sorrow. I felt guilty. But I also felt that I had no choice.

It was my intention to repeat this scenario each morning, but when I went out for my evening chores in the barn, Hercules had already roosted above one of the sliding horse stall doors. Although I flipped on the barn lights, he showed no intention of moving. His long tail feathers curved down, and he eyed me witheringly with one of his beady, red-rimmed, yellow eyes. 

As my little ones were in the house with my 15 year old, I didn't feel comfortable lugging a ladder over, grappling with a struggling roo, climbing down with him as an unwilling companion, opening the barn door, opening the pasture gate, opening the chicken run, and stuffing him into the pop door on the coop. It would take so long. What if he made me lose my balance? What if I lost my grip on him and he was out in the fast-falling dark and not roosted? So I left him. But I did leave a light on, to deter any prowling raccoons.

And this has been our arrangement ever since. Hercules is a lot less agitated by being separated from the females, and the hens have been happy and uninjured since his departure. He roams outside the pasture now or in the barn, occasionally perching in some prominent place and repeatedly crowing as loudly as he his able for a longish spell, as if defiantly proclaiming his ownership, despite his limitations. Sometimes he even makes his way to the house, ascends to the picnic table on the patio, and struts back and forth on its top, crying out for intervals as if with impotent rage. 

The one rooster left with the hens is a bantam named Rosie. (Read more about him here.) He still looks like a half-plucked cornish game hen, and the "girls" ignore or easily spurn his half-hearted and wimpy advances. He spends most of his time pulling his naked legs up against his body for warmth, hunkering down in the bedding on the floor of the run in order to conserve his body heat, or eating with slow steadiness, as if determined to gain enough size to be able to throw his weight around. We tried calling him Petey instead (like Pete Rose) once we learned he was a male, but with his bright pink skin and mild temper, Rosie he remains. 

Adding Martyrs to the Mix

This year on All Hallows Eve, we attended a parish costume party, complete with games and prizes. Since my kids are older, they kicked up the costume fun a notch. Of course I prodded my kids about costumes for over a month beforehand. No one was particularly interested. None of them wanted to settle on their saint or work on their costumes. Then,  the day before the party, they kicked into high gear. 

I had been trying to interest my oldest and was making jokes about how he should attend as a martyr, especially one that was unique like St. Lawrence, Pope St. Clement I, etc. His imagination and sense of humor was finally stirred by my suggestion to be St. John the Baptist after he was beheaded. This is what we came up with. 

For the table, he took a box, fixed wooden fence stakes to it for legs, and a thin piece of plywood to the top so that a tablecloth would hang in a convincing way. We duct taped some spare fabric around the plywood edge so that the cloth went to the floor, and used an old decorative table cloth layered over that. He cut a hole big enough for his head to fit through the box and wood. We cut Xs in the cloth so that his head could fit through those. Then we cut an aluminum serving tray in two, duct taped the edges to protect him from cuts. This was to be fitted on either side of his neck in order to make it appear that his head was on a platter.

He really didn't need a wig, but thought an old ratty one we had was extra humorous. So he used red lipstick for blood on his neck, eye liner for a scruffy beard, crouched in the box, donned the wig, and tried to look dead. Unfortunately, this first dry run was the only picture I captured, but you get the idea. 

My oldest daughter liked the martyr idea after that too. She decided on St. Joan of Arc due to her hair cut. I fashioned cardboard flames for her that caused an emotional and nerve wracking kick off to the party. (We ran out of time when working on the flames, and had to settle for plain yellow paint which wouldn't dry. That meant that we had to go in two separate vehicles and that she was late for the line-up. We didn't even get time to make her look like she was tied to the stake! Oh, well.) The flames were zip tied to a PVC pipe that I spray painted to look like hammered metal. She wore her dad's white shirt, an old skirt of mine, and some awesome shoes that she constructed. She had old, orange, Croc-style rubber shoes. To these she tied some split wood by lacing twice around the wood and through the holes in the shoes. To the shoes she hot glued sticks and leaves. They were cumbersome to walk in, but really "made" her costume. Here's how it turned out.

My youngest daughter was St. Kateri Tekakwitha because she wanted to put her long hair to good use. :)

My middle boy was St. Joseph.

My husband went as St. Maximilian Kolbe in his prison uniform. 

I transformed a striped pair of pajamas for the occasion.

And I went as St. Christopher holding the Christ Child (my youngest, curly-headed son.) I wore a button-down shirt of my husband's, some rolled up work pants, my rope sandals, carried a staff, and lugged my son around. He was dressed in a white onesie under a white slip, with white leather slippers. He was absolutely adorable.

My oldest two were the only saints depicted during or after martyrdom. I guess that's a bit gruesome, but we tried not to be too gory, and it certainly resonated with my 'tween and teen. They would have been begrudging participants otherwise.