At my age I generally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about raging hormones, so the last couple of days have hit me like so much ice water in the face. It turns out that sometimes wildly raging hormones are a fact of life at our place whether I want to be dealing with them or not. 

Normally, when I do the barn chores, everything transpires according to a well orchestrated plan. Morning is the part of my day that I normally consider quite contemplative, reflecting what I hold to be a silent and mindful relationship between a human being and the denizens of several other nations who somehow interdepend. Each bird and animal is aware of the order of business, and I usually arrive to find them all patiently waiting for their part in our shared routine.

Chicken and turkey habitats are checked first for food and fresh water, then eggs are collected and put in a plastic bucket to be taken afterward to the house. If there’s a broody hen in the process of laying, I come back a little later in the day.

In the barn, our “odd couple,” John and Poncho, are dealt with right away. A ram and a male llama respectively, they constitute, apart from Sasha, the only unaltered males on the premises and have somehow managed to live in harmony for years. John, who is a messy, almost toothless eater, needs to be given a small ration of mash made from pelleted hay soaked in water. Poncho, a large gentle creature when not in close proximity to the females, receives (in addition to his hay) a small handful of grain and a stroke on the silky fibre of his neck. The two of them sometimes jump and tussle while this happens, but are generally more interested in the food than in making trouble for me.

Our three geldings are fed next and constitute no difficulty. Large greedy animals, they normally get straight to the hay. The female herd and the donkey, always eager for a nosh,  jolt and jockey one another for position at the mangers but settle easily once their food has arrived. The three skinny llamas who get extra "groceries" step smartly out of their stalls and into the centre of the barn where bright yellow buckets of grain await. The donkey, the only one here of her species, stands eagerly at the gate assertively looking for the small handful of grain she receives as a special treat. After all these things have been done I can set about the daily task of shoveling manure.

Yesterday, however, did not go according to Hoyle. Of course, if I’d been thinking clearly I might have anticipated this, but sometimes I confess that my head is somewhere else. The Russian steppes, perhaps, or somewhere in Peru. At any rate, while daydreaming about the wonders of springtime, I totally lost sight of the rather serious practical implications this season can also hold for me.

Yesterday, I made my first big mistake of the season by letting both small flocks of our chickens out to range, as opposed to just the rooster and three hens who live in the barn without access to a run. I knew better, of course, but  I fell victim (and not for the first time) to the sort of magical thinking that throws reason and experience to the wind.

For Sasha and me as stewards, there has always been an intellectual conflict between the notion of confinement for purposes of protection and the argument that quality of life is at its utmost only when creatures are allowed to be free.  Yesterday, in my head, these concerns were nowhere to be found as I thought only of the green grass and the dirt baths that the chickens could enjoy along with the brightness of the sunlight and the freshness of the air. The matter of spring hormones never crossed my mind and when they surfaced, my once easy routine spun rapidly out of control.

Almost from the second the two roosters encountered one another in the sunlight, they poised themselves for battle, and they continued to battle unremittingly  for the largest part of the morning. Neck feathers fanned out, they flew at one another ferociously, easily eluding all my clumsy attempts to restrain them. So vicious and lengthy was the combat that I actually came to understand why people bet on cock fights, although had I been the one making the bets, I’d certainly have lost. The large, handsome barred rock, by far the heavier of the birds, took a sorry beating before I could round him up and return him to the safety of captivity. It was awful and I hated myself for being so dumb.

To add insult to injury, when I entered the barn, John and Poncho were nowhere to be seen. Bad sign. A normal day would have found the ram standing upright against the stall gate, eagerly awaiting his food with Poncho framed patiently in the doorway behind him. Yesterday I found the pair of them outdoors in the adjacent paddock, where they had breached the fencing to graze happily on the fresh green grass growing there. 

Although this behaviour might strike others as "cute" and while the image may seem bucolic and benign, for me it is as loaded as hell. Sasha and I are almost fanatical about never allowing Poncho into any paddock on a contiguous fence line with that of the female herd. The reason? Hormones, of course.

A large male llama in rut, while a stunning thing to behold, snorts and draws himself up like a monarch, commanding the attention of every female on the place. It is for a very good reason that the male of the camelid species is called a "macho" and only a matter of time before he, or one (or more) of the ladies, will draw near enough to jump the fence and embark on what comes naturally. Once in progress, this activity is too hard and sometimes too dangerous to stop. Although there is a drug we can administer should breeding actually occur, it is best to prevent the situation in the first place. We do not need any young.

Because I have seen this happen before, I was able to move quickly to sequester the aggressively flirty females and to shore up the fencing well enough to serve until Sasha returns on the weekend. Which is not to suggest that there weren't a few hairy moments along the way. In the presence of a potential mate, these snorting four hundred pound girls were really raring to go.

Now that the excitement is over and I can reflect on the events of the day, I realize that all of these situations will have to be managed in a better way, insuring that quality of life is not compromised too much. For the chickens I have just ordered some portable netting that will enable them to enjoy the pleasures of the land while keeping the adversarial roosters separate from one another. Whoever invented the stuff was a genius.

As for the glamorous Poncho and his potential harem, there might be no sex in the offing, but there are plenty of green non-contiguous paddocks over whose fence lines they can longingly gaze. It'll have to do.

Last Friday was Sasha’s birthday although when he arrived back here that night from his work in the city, he was far too exhausted to celebrate anything. The film business, whenever there is any, is hell on domestic life.  Snowbound since the previous Tuesday, I couldn’t even make my way into town for so much as a bottle of wine so the birthday boy himself brought home Chinese take-out that we ate in our bathrobes in front of the fire.  It was cozy and utterly fine.

With the loss of a beloved llama and the sudden craziness of the new work routine, I am adjusting to being a film widow somewhat more slowly than I have in the past. It has been awhile and I’d grown accustomed, after so many years, to having another person here all the time. Now things are topsy turvy  again and the realities of country life belong, as before, all to me. After imagining myself in an existence drenched with abstract cerebral activity and contemplations of high art, I now begin each day as the sole caretaker of a mixed menagerie. 

In the course of a conversation I once had with a friend on the subject of equilibrium, we told one another of the particular things in life that were keeping us on an even keel. She had been going through a particularly stressful period in her professional life and found music to be a great leveller whenever her reality sped out of control. I remember telling her then that my own sanity could be defined by that hour or so every morning that I spent in the barn shovelling manure.

As I think about this now, with new callouses forming on my hands, I find myself back again in that simpler, quieter world where the CBC and the other media are the background to my living and not the voices that shape what I perceive and feel. In the world I share with these animals, there are basic requirements for well being and there is Nature, the ineluctable centre of everything else I do.

These are the facts of life. This morning Ceiara’s body lies wrapped in a black plastic tarp in an outdoor paddock just outside the barn. Since Sasha is away until the weekend and it will take both of us to bury her, the bitterly frozen air will keep her from decay. I can’t bring myself to look in her direction.

Every human knows by adulthood these certain truths about mourning - that with death there will be emotional pain, that big hot tears will come often and unexpectedly, and that much time must pass before the memories so newly piercing to the heart will be able to evoke (and be transformed into) smiles and even laughter. One day a lovely warm feeling somewhere deep inside will assure us how lucky we were to have loved in the first place the one for whom today we grieve so much. 

That day will not come soon for me but I have responsibilities here and life has to go on. The other animals still need me.

Feeding time in our barn is an extremely hectic experience, every movement carefully choreographed to minimize the chaos of large hungry animals in lively competition for the food. There is a hierarchy in the herd that needs to be respected, there are special diets for the older animals and for anyone who is thin. There are chickens to feed and eggs to be collected. There are buckets of water to haul. All this must happen in the midst of a sort of free-for-all complete with warning sounds and occasional gobs of spit. Be efficient, keep your eyes open, move quickly and be prepared to duck.

Today when I entered the barn at chore time, I discovered there a silence so pervasive that it took my breath away. As I worked my way, strangely unmolested, through the usual routine - small buckets of grain for the oldest or the thinnest animals, fresh water for everyone, and then mangers filled with hay - I saw the entirety of the female llama herd standing absolutely still, oblivious to my presence and utterly disaffected by their food. To a one, they were huddled together, clustered in the doorway, each facing outward to the black tarpaulin lying before them in the snow. Once again, I couldn't stop my tears.

In stillness they remained there until I finally went away. They will eat when they are ready. Humans, it would seem, have no monopoly on the rituals of loss.

Sasha is in the city today working on a film and I am writing through a veil of tears that somehow will not stop. 

This morning our veterinarian arrived at our barn to administer that painless but fatal cocktail that will terminate an animal’s life. The diagnosis for Ceiara was so dire and the rate of her decline so rapid that it became intolerable to endure. 

By yesterday we were unable to keep her sternal, which means that every time I checked on her she had flopped over onto one side, her lovely long neck no longer upright but flat to the ground. The veterinary examination determined that Ceiara’s spinal cord had been, by whatever means, so badly damaged that she could feel no deep pain in any of her limbs. She would never walk again, never graze in the fields with her companions, never be able to leave the confines of the barn. By this morning she had ceased to eat or drink, her neck curled awkwardly behind her, her big beautiful eyes empty and very far away. 

Over time and over buckets of tears, we have come to see this stage of the journey, replete with all the heartache, as an integral part of the responsibility that accompanies our stewardship of all the living creatures in our care. We are family, after all, and our hearts have beaten in unison for more than a decade. To end her time with us was an anguishing choice and not one taken lightly, but we are long past the metaphysics and the guilt some would have us feel for “playing God.”  It never gets any easier.

Before daybreak this morning as we positioned her listless body in the barn, agreement came without any words. We have loved Ceiara far too long and far too much to let her suffer any further. Although my partner needed to be elsewhere, I was there to cradle her neck, her companion until the moment when she crossed the rainbow bridge. I owed her that much. 

In pacem requiescat, my beautiful girl.

Sometimes the life of the mind has to take a back seat to the life of the heart. As I write this, one of our beautiful female llamas is very ill and the odds in favour of recovery are unclear. 

There is an old saying that “a down llama is a dead llama," but we know that this isn’t necessarily so. However, Ceiara has just gone down and seems to have little if any sensation in both her front and hind legs. We found her this morning at feeding time, lying on her side with her limbs spayed out around her.

Ataxia of this nature is the usual result of trauma to the spinal cord caused by parasitic infection. Since all the animals received the appropriate wormers at the appropriate time, we are mystified as to the cause. We are following a treatment protocol developed at Ohio State University and working with our vet to give the necessary care. Just as with human patients, sores can be the uncomfortable byproduct of lengthy periods of recumbency just as limbs tend to atrophy when they are not exercised. So for the next many days we have our work cut out for us. Food, medications and injections, physiotherapy and lots and lots of love.