Nani escaped from the yard 5 times yesterday. The details are unimportant but let’s just say it was a combination of canine ingenuity, faulty fencing and human error. She fervently paced the deck in-between escapes. I thought she wanted to join the party down the street. On the 4th escape, she returned with a chicken! Despite my anger, it was impossible not to laugh when she came hauling down the street full speed with a chicken flapping out of her mouth and feathers flying everywhere. But when I got up to the front porch and saw the seemingly dead chicken, I felt horrible. So did Eric.
We had no idea what to do with the chicken and never felt more like city folk. We managed to put the chicken in a Zappos shoe box without touching it, and got in the truck intending to take the chicken to the woods. But then we wondered if that was the right thing to do. We didn’t want to leave it there half dead to die a horrible death and also didn’t want to kill it in case it had a chance to survive. So we called the Human Society since, of course, there’s no animal control where we live. They told us to kill it if we thought it was going to die anyway and bury it, eat it, or use it for fertilizer under a plant (no joke)! So we turned around to go home to kill the chicken. We discussed drowning it, cutting its head off with a shovel (as suggested by the humane society), or smashing its head with a hammer. I favored the latter and volunteered to do the deed. On the way home, we ran into our friend who has a farm and asked her what to do. She said she’d been “putting it out there that she wanted a chicken” and assessed the chicken. She surmised it was simply in shock, would survive, and gladly took the chicken! We were so relieved, and are hoping for a few eggs.
When I adopted Nani from the Humane Society I asked if she had any behavior issues. The only thing the lady said that once Nani saw a chicken and tracked it for a long time, incessantly barking. And this isn’t the first time I’ve seen her go cuckoo for chickens.
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