Animals, others will miss Shirley

By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

My second batch of 100 chicks arrived on Monday. Tom and I argued about the pen we put them in. I told him I wanted the door tighter and he said he would be putting new hinges on it so we can get in and out of the pen easier and the dog can't get in.

He said, "I know what to do. Don't tell me what to do."

I have backed off with the advice, but I will be checking on these new chicks constantly and also checking the whereabouts of Scout, the rat terrier, who killed my last batch of chicks.

I have been taking care of animals a lot lately. My neighbor, Shirley, died last Thursday and she has left a variety of chicks, pigeons, ducks, geese, bunnies, cats, 14 goats, a dog, named Domino and a horse, named Butterscotch. Shirley died in her sleep on her couch Wednesday night.

She had come home from surgery on Tuesday. I had been doing her chores while she was in the hospital, and she had phoned me on Tuesday to say that she could do the chores herself. I told her I thought it was too soon, but she said that she could handle them. Wednesday evening she phoned me and said she wasn't feeling right and asked if I would I do the chores on Thursday.

My son Timmy and I went over to her acreage on Thursday morning and we felt something wasn't right when Shirley didn't answer the door after we knocked several times. The door was locked so we couldn't get in and I had the thought that maybe she had gone back to the hospital. We did the chores and we went over on Friday morning and did the chores again, as we hadn't heard not to do them. We knew that someone had been to the house, as her shoes were moved to the other side of the porch and her dog, Domino, let out a mournful howl when we got out of the car. That afternoon we got a call that Shirley had passed away and her son hadn't found her until late Thursday night. She had always talked about her irregular heartbeat and this is what she died from. Tom is digging her grave with her son this week.

Shirley lived very simply. She enjoyed the company of animals more than people. She told me that she had a pet gopher when she was growing up and she raised an orphan raccoon when a car had killed the mother. She kept a turtle in her basement one winter and it hibernated there. The turtle woke up now and then and ate dog food that Shirley kept in a dish for it. One time I went over to her house in late fall and she had a duck in the basement that was living in a cereal box. She kept him in there to keep warm and it seemed happy. The duck would stick its head out and quack when he wanted to be fed. Another time she was raising hamsters in her bathtub as she didn't have a proper cage for them.

Her animals have been under stress since she isn't around and I don't know what will happen to all of them. She has beautiful multi-colored chickens and every time I am there, I discover a new set of chicks with a mother hen peeping away in another corner of her barn.

I am sorry that Shirley died alone, but she died peacefully in her sleep in her house, surrounded by her animals and that is probably the way she wanted to go. Her acreage is so alive with animal life it has been hard to fathom that she is gone. I am sure that she is in heaven with the many animals she raised, petting and talking with them as she did when she was alive.