I tried to move the babies last week, into the stall that houses the oldest birds, who promptly attacked and traumatized the one tiny newbie I introduced. So much for that. I took the poor trembling babe back to the giant cardboard box she’s been sharing with her sisters, and decided to delay. But the little girls were getting crazed from lack of space, so I decided to see how they’d fare with the other group. They cackled in protest, and promptly followed me out of the new stall, but they’re gentled enough by frequent handling as chicks to catch easily, and so I rounded them all up, returned them to the stall, and bribed everyone with more feed than usual. I also moved in the youngsters’ heatlamp, thinking it better not to give them two shocks to their systems (cold air and strange, hostile creatures) at once.

Before I moved the birds, I’d started worrying about the heatlamp over their box in the old stall. It seemed stable, the cord draped over sawhorses and the back of the lamp clamped to a sturdy piece of wood, but at night before bed, I found myself starting to look out at the barn once, twice, three times (hello, OCD??) to make sure it wasn’t burning. Then I had a dream which, among other things, included the local volunteer fire department arriving at a barn which, though not mine, was mine in the dream. (As it turned out, the firemen were really there to deal with the dream-lions who had invaded the farm, not a fire, but I digress. Dreams will do that to you.) When I moved the hens, I moved the lamp, too, and hung it over the steel waterer, hoping to (forgive me) kill two birds with one stone: warmth for the water, and the birds.

Yesterday, I took a leisurely walk down to the barn (or as leisurely as a walk through foot-deep snow can be), walking along the edge of the woods that border our property, searching for bear tracks that Dido and the H assured me they’d seen during their Sunday hike. I saw lots of tracks: human, deer, dog–but nothing that struck me as ursine. I noticed, as I neared the location of the rumored sighting, just uphill from our barn, an odd, sweet odor in the air, like tobacco smoke. Was there someone in the woods? Hunting season is long over, so that seemed unlikely. Perhaps the plumbers who’d been out in the morning to fix the barn’s frozen pipes, and who I’m pretty sure are smokers, had foolishly smoked in the barn, or outside near the enormous manure pile? They’d know better, I was sure. As I neared the barn, the scent grew stronger and sweeter, lovely wood smoke on the air. I shoved open the barn door and entered. The horses were out in the paddocks, but the chickens always hear me coming and start to cackle, cluck and shriek for food.

I wanted to check the transplants first, so I opened their stall door. Then I saw it: the heatlamp had fallen to the stall floor,but stayed lit, and was gently smoking the hay and shavings that lie eight inches deep on the ground. I was able to drench the area with buckets of water and shovel out the still steaming ash, but not without horrible visions of what might have been. The chickens were unperturbed. They pecked at the charred shavings and gave me dirty looks when I dumped out their waterer to quench the smolder.