Fire at Little Sprouts

making this blog post, heart still heavy with loss, hands shaking,  I tried several creative titles. But no. sometimes it just is what it is. We had a fire.

The front chicken coop caught on fire around midnight.  Cause undetermined. I have my strong suspicions, but there is so little left, it can not be determined with certainty.

What I am certain about is the death and destruction. All of our original chickens, and all of our recently hatched 4th generation birds are gone. The building and all of its contents a total loss.  Fire has the ability to destroy so much, so fast.

The weather station we just installed was mounted to the top corner of the chicken coop. around midnight the temperature started rising. It reached 129 degrees at 1:22am and went offline.  I woke up about 1:30 with a strange feeling inside. An old feeling, long since forgotten. Fire truck. They have a particular sound. As a volunteer fireman in texas for a number of years I got accustomed to that sound. Tonight I awoke with a dread in my stomach because that was the first sound I heard. Firetruck. Sure enough, the units were just rolling into the front drive as I ran out to see the building about half gone. My heart sank as I ran back inside to alert all the sleeping children and my wife that we needed to wake and prepare for the worst, just in case.

Fortunately the fire was contained to the coop, the light rain helped to keep it from spreading.

Nevertheless, after the fire was out by the experienced efforts of our local fire department, It is heart breaking to see about 400 chicken bodies on the ground-- trapped,  burned, cooked. not a one escaped.

Tomorrow will be time for retrospection, cleanup, paperwork.  Tonight is time to consider the delicacy of life, how easily it can be taken from any of us in an instant, how powerful nature is in spite of our best efforts, and how human we are.