Well, it's been pretty quiet lately, owing to our keeping all of the chickens cooped for a long stretch of the summer. All of the chickens, that is, except for this small white hen who we've named "The Magical Chicken". Here she is:
She doesn't like the coop.. or the barn. She disappears at night, re-appears walking the fence line like a sitting duck (bad poultry metaphor, I know). And-- here's the really remarkable thing-- she hasn't been eaten!
Where does she go? How does she avoid the jaws of our resident predator? I have no idea. Once, I found her high in the rafters on the outside of the barn, once in an open shed that had been home to our trio of pigs, "The Daves". She is a cagey little thing, zig-zagging across open spaces, never drifting to close to the woods.
Our older hens (These girls are six now!) are more sedate and trusting. I've seen them gather into a ruffled little knot and gawk as the fox mows one of their sisters down. Not so with "The Magical Chicken". Long before the fox shows, she is up and out of there!
Perhaps, we have some natural selection going on in the barnyard and before long we'll have a flock of super-smart fox-detecting rafters-roosting chickens.
4 comments:
maybe she was a fox in her past life - so she knows all the tricks *grin*
http://damselinadirtydress.blogspot.com
She's a beauty and well some chickens are just smarter than the rest. Rock on Magical chicken.
I love this! I wanna be your friend! What a pretty hen. We have chickens too and I love them. I bet this hen flys up into low hanging branches to roost at night. My mother says she remembers her dad's chickens flying up into a tree outside their kitchen window at night to roost. We lock all of ours up in the coop at night for their own good. But they all go in there willingly at dusk. They're so defenseless at night. Your magical chicken is a smart girl for sure!
Yup! She's STILL doing her magical thing!
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