There’s a Reason They’re Called Chickens

I have chickens* penned in my front yard. Right next to the apple tree. Between strays and intentional pets, now vandalistic landscaping, we’re running a regular petting zoo and small arboretum.

This morning, one flew the coop. It’s a 4×4 makeshift pen, but it doesn’t work with the idiom. After an hour of trying to outsmart an eight-week-old chicken, I’ve learned a few things I feel ready to share.

1. Chickens poop a lot. Often, in their own food and water. I find this distasteful and not just a little unsanitary. They especially poop when alarmed by the unintended consequences of flying out of the pen.
2. Chickens would rather be in the pen. Except when they are in the pen. Then they would like to be out of the pen.
3. Chickens are fast. Faster than me. Don’t laugh. They’re faster than you, too. You cannot chase a chicken and win, unless by winning you mean that she is still loose and you are on the ground after having chased, swiped, and missed by a feather, again.
4. There’s a reason they’re called chickens. Chickens are chickens. Easily terrified. And not very clever when frightened.
5. Chickens have a marked advantage in Duck Duck Goose. Period.
6. Chickens desperately want to be together. The escaped chicken would not leave the perimeter of the pen because her friend was inside. For an hour, they ran from one side to the other so that they could cheep at each other. And attempt to peck out one another’s eye. Which reminds me . . .
7. Hen-pecked is more than a metaphor.
8. A chicken’s appetite is greater than her fear. She will continue to peck for food, even as she perceives imminent danger (me) less than a foot away.
9. Some chickens only know how to run in one direction. I haven’t tested this hypothesis with more than one chicken, thus I cannot say all chickens. No matter what, this one could only run the pen’s perimeter in one direction.
10. When chasing chickens, one could use an empty laundry basket for a net, if one didn’t know there was a handy fish net hanging on the garage wall.

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*A nice farm awaits Mordecai and Drumstick, where they can run free from the pen and lay eggs to their hearts’ content, as soon as they get their big chicken feathers.