Bone Harvest by Mary Logue

dancing or anything. Just normal.”
    “How many eggs did you find today?”
    “Only seven.”
    “What’s usual for them?”
    “More like over twenty.”
    “Are the chickens coughing or sneezing?” he asked.
    Jilly thought before she answered. “No. Just spinning around and then lying down and dying.”
    Rich stood back up. He had some questions for Celia. “Have you vaccinated your birds?”
    She stared at him, then reluctantly shook her head.
    “Have they been in contact with any other poultry? Did you introduce any new birds to the flock recently?”
    “No.”
    “Has anyone who raises chickens come and had contact with your birds?”
    “No. Not that I’m aware of.”
    “Let me look at their food and water.”
    Jilly took him over to the feeder that was out in the yard. He bent down and examined the mash that was in it. He could see some hard, granular shapes. Didn’t look like any feed he had ever used. “What is this?” He held up a piece for Jilly and her mother to see.
    “I’ve never noticed that before,” Mrs. Daniels told him.
    “Jilly, bring me a cup of your feed.”
    The child dutifully ran and got him some feed in a coffee can. No dark, granular shapes were in it.
    “It looks like someone might have put something in your chicken feed.”
    Celia Daniels looked at him with fear in her dark brown eyes. “Will all the chickens die?”
    “I can’t tell you that. I hope not. Let’s get a paper bag for what’s in here and I’ll take it with me. Then wash out the feeder and put new feed in it.”
    Thomas ran into the house, happy to help.
    His mother yelled at him as he went, “Grab a couple of plastic garbage bags, too.”
    Rich looked at her and she answered his question without its being asked. “For the chickens. I suppose we should preserve them.”
    “I’ll take them with me, too.”
    Thomas came back with a brown paper bag on his head. Jilly laughed. Rich found it a pleasant sound. They dumped the contaminated feed into the bag and he rolled the top up so it wouldn’t spill over in his car.
    Then he reached down to pick up the closest of the dead chickens. First he was surprised by the depth of the bird’s feathers. His hands sank in until he found the small body hiding under all that down. Then he wondered at the lightness of the bird. Fluffier than the pheasants he was accustomed to. And lighter still because it was so quiet. No struggling against him as he lifted it. He wondered if the soul of a chicken were a measurable weight.
    After he had filled the bag with the four chickens, he looked at Celia.
    She shrugged her shoulders as if to say, What can we do?
    He answered her gesture. “You’ll just have to wait and see on the others. I’ll bring this feed in to be tested, and if there’s an antidote, someone will bring it out.”
    “What do you think was put in the feed?” She looked at him with swollen eyes. “Why would anyone do this to us?”
    “I don’t know. I’d hate to try to guess. Someone from the sheriff’s office will contact you about this.”
    Jilly, who had been standing quietly next to her mother, suddenly held up something for him to see. “Lookit what I found.”
    Rich looked down and saw a small white bone gleaming in her hand. “Where did you find that?”
    “In the chicken coop. In with the eggs.”
    Rich took the bone and studied it. He remembered what Claire had said about the culprit leaving a memento. “I think I need to make a call from your house.”
     
    “A story about chickens dying?” Sarah Briding asked him with disappointment and disbelief deep in her voice. Harold knew she had not graduated from journalism school in order to write about chickens. But it was the news of the day. And they needed it quickly, as the paper was about to go to bed.
    “Go up to the sheriff’s department and talk to the deputy on the case. I think it’s Watkins. Dig. There might be more to this than you think.” He would see what she found. As he