One of my chicks is failing. Her name is Velcro, and while she seemed perky enough for the first month in the last two weeks she has been the one left behind when they burst out of the coop. It is easy to catch her, which I have done several times to look for any signs of injury. For the last few days I have expected to find her stiff and lifeless, but she keeps hobbling. 

Finally this morning I separated her. It is the advice on several chicken group pages, to protect the rest of the flock in case of illness. I tucked her into a pen across the yard with a small dish of food and one of water. At least she would not be pecked. Chickens are not always kind to the weak. 

I turned around after finishing up the other chicken chores and saw her scooting across the grass toward her flock. Quickly, even. She had found the gap in the fence and was determined to not be alone. Dear girl. So I fetched the small pen, the ridiculously inadequate one that was my first effort at chicken keeping. I bought it online, believing the description that it would house five birds, because that would surely be big enough for me. It is smaller than my bathtub, and besides I steamed past five birds on my ever expanding path to where I am now with basically an aviary. I set the wee pen right next to the one her sisters were in, so she could see them. And chat. I do not know if she will make it to tomorrow. 

The drive to be together is not limited to chickens. People too begin to atrophy in isolation. I sighed to think of the miraculous circumstances that landed my own mother under our roof for her final few years of life, rather than in a cushy apartment a few miles away. Alone. It was not as if I had a slew of spare time for her. The twins were born that year, and Benjamin got his diagnosis. To say nothing of the other five children who were still at home. But she wanted to be near us. She left the door between her room and ours ajar, just to hear the noise and see us fluttering by. 

There are other people who spend much of their time in isolation. What could I do about that?