A Chicken Tale

We have a little speckled hen. She's smaller than everyone else, except maybe the Silkie. Last year, they had a very large yard to run and peck around in. Well, this little speckled hen would run across the yard with her neck stretched out (usually trying to escape a roo) and I said, "Hey, doesn't she remind you a bit of the Road Runner? What was the Road Runner's name?" Everyone whips out a phone. "Beep Beep." So that's how the little speckled hen got her name. 

Well, Beep Beep is one of the friendliest hens we've ever had. She's nosy. She wants to see everything we do. If you tap/slap on any surface, she'll come running. If she spies you feeding the ducks, she'll come from nowhere and land on your shoulder, chattering a mile a minute. She doesn't fit in well with the other hens. They don't really pick on her, but they just kind of leave her out of everything, including meal time. She refuses to stay in the coop where she belongs. Every morning when I go to the barn, she appears from a different spot every time. Sometimes she's far up in the rafters and drops onto my shoulder - scared the crap out of me the first time she did that. She follows me around while I clean goat poop, looking for goodies. She sits near one of our broody hens keeping a wary eye on the mother-to-be in case she attacks, but she knows mama gets tossed some extra treats and sometimes, if she's quick, Beep Beep can snag a bite too.

I call out to Beep Beep in the mornings and it's rare that I don't see her running from somewhere, neck stretched out, hoping to get into the feed bucket before I dump it. She's jumped into a bucket of water in the middle of winter, thinking it was feed. What a terrible surprise for her. During storms, I would fill the feeder in the barn (nice weather, I feed outside) and because the bigger hens won't let her in, she would jump into the feeder head first and all you'd see was her tail stuck straight up.

We love all our critters and spoil them, but we do have to eat, so we try not to get too attached. I don't know if Beep Beep lays any eggs, and if she doesn't, she doesn't have much purpose here... but she's one of the few birds that has a free pass around here. When she eventually dies, of natural causes I hope, she'll probably be buried with some of our other special pets.  We don't eat family. Even the cats understand that. They'll strut around with the chickens, avoid any chicks, and God help the stupid weasel that thinks he can get a free meal here. 

A little lot light on the kinky stuff, but hey, hubby's on the road. There's only so much a girl can get up to by herself.