The Venerable Chicken

The other day I was working in my garden, focused on ripping out some vines of Oregon Grape, when I looked up and saw the neighbor's brown and white chicken standing next to my strawberry patch. She was eyeing at me with those chicken eyes, bobbing that chicken head. "A chicken." I said aloud to the fella, who was also in the backyard. My first thought was, 'What should I do?' My second thought was, 'I need to shoo it back to the neighbors yard.' As if it was a serious offense to have someone else's chicken in my yard. But then I thought, 'How lovely.'

Working in the garden, alongside a chicken. What a peaceful moment: at work and enjoying the garden together.

The neighbor's chickens enjoying their freedom

I had noticed several weeks before that the neighbors had stopped penning their chickens. The daughter and I had enjoyed peering over the fence at the chickens since last summer. Sometimes they were in their pen but sometimes they hid in their coop. Soon after I noticed that they had been "freed" to explore their backyard, I was looking out of my kitchen window and saw a grey chicken in the middle of our green lawn. "There's a chicken in the backyard!" I yelled to my two-year-old daughter. I grabbed her up and ran outside, so she could see it. (Chickens are very exciting to a two-year-old and, therefore, the mother of a two-year-old.) Unfortunately, us running outside scared the chicken back through the decayed spot at the bottom of fence that divides our yard with the neighbor's yard. So the chicken escaped to the safety of her yard and away from shrieks and stares. The daughter was disappointed. I was disappointed.

What is it with chickens? They are beautiful with their fluffy, feathered bodies, long necks, tiny heads, and slight awkwardness. They vary in kind, some with frizzy feathers or colorful plumes or fancy feet. They move about with unthinking purpose. They don't seem to want to bother anyone, although I have never kept chickens or spent much time with them, so I don't really know. Really the most I've seen of chickens is at the fair or on a public farm.

Diablo

Fancy chicken

Shaggy chicken

I enjoy looking at them in their cages, thinking which ones I might like visit every day, if I kept chickens. They are intriguing creatures. When I was about eight years old, I stuck my finger into the chicken cage at the county fair, despite signs stating, "Don't put fingers in cages." Getting your finger pecked by a chicken hurts like hell, but mostly I felt embarrassed for not defying the sign's clear warning.

Don't put your finger in that cage little girl! 

I bumped into my neighbor at the store and told her about the renegade chickens coming through the fence. Now there is a board blocking the hole. So, no more escaped chickens. My strawberry patch runs along the fence and I had been tossing the strawberries that the slugs had gotten to along the fence line, thinking they would just dry out. However, I noticed that the berries were disappearing. Then one day when was in the patch, I saw a little chicken head bob through the fence and nab up the half-slug-eaten berries. A delightful highlight of my garden is this mutually beneficial arrangement.