The chicken that didn’t cross the road

So…We were bookin it down the road late yesterday afternoon, when I slammed on the binders, and hung a u-ey. Jen said, “What are you doing?” As I pulled into the road alongside the cemetery. “I saw a chicken. ” I said matter of factly.

Well we looked all around, and there was no chicken to be seen! Jen asked me if I was sure it wasn’t a stump. I told her that I was POSITIVE that I saw a chicken.

I slowly backed the van toward the paved road, and was ready to back along the ditch when Jen and I saw the hen at the same time. I jumped out of the van, and asked William for the Cheese Nips he was munching on in the back of the van. I started chucking them at the fleeing hen.

Jen tried to head her off. I told Jen to drive her toward the cemetery fence. I was thinking I could snatch her up as she got stuck along the chain-link. Sure enough, she got alongside the fence, and panicked as Jen and I tried to surround her…

Then ZIP! Under the fence she went, hauling chicken butt across the cemetery for the fence line that bordered the road, and went straight under it. This time I gave her a wide berth and started chucking Cheese Nips at her. Eventually she decided to try one. From that point on, I knew she would be mine! She LOVED those Cheese Nips!

I tossed the Nips closer, and closer to me. I was sitting against a big tree. Left hand making a pile of Nips in front of me, and right arm stretched out along the base of the tree. Soon the hen was beak first in a pile of Nips, with my right hand behind her. Left or right, she had nowhere to go.

I counted her pecks, and learned her pattern, because she would peck, then look up at me to see if I was after her. She dipped her head, gave two pecks, and BINGO! My right had shot out and grabbed her by the left foot before she knew what was happening!

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The new chicken sharing a roost for the night on the porch railing with our rooster “Jake”

Jen held her all the way home. As soon as we pulled into the driveway she heard our other chickens, and our roosters, and got excited. I had planned to put her in the goat pen for a few nights, but she REALLY wanted to be with the other hens, so we set her loose.

Two years ago? It was just before dark, and the same section of road, just a mile or so further back when I caught a hen that was roosting on a cable to a hay field!

Next time I hope it is a pig!!!

Doug Alley

About Doug Alley

I grew up in Bath, Maine in an upper lower class family with 3 step sisters, a step brother, and a little sister. After high school I spent 3 years serving in the USAF at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage AK. I've competed in, and won, demolition derbies. I've competed in, and never won, stock car races. I am the 47-year-old father of an 11-year-old boy who is pretty sure he is smarter than I ever was. We live on a little less than an acre of land in a 1973 mobile home in Stetson with my wife Jen, some cats, a few chickens, and rabbits, and a couple of goats. I hunt, fish, camp out, dabble in photography, gardening, and I cook in variable degrees of near success.