We lost a chicken.
There I was, working out, and the husband went out to feed the chickens. Our house is set up in such a way that we have a projector room in the basement, in the room that leads out to the back yard. We have a curtain that covers the back door so that it's possible to run the projector in the day time. Thus, the husband had to sneak past into the back yard and flash some light on my work out.
I was happily air boxing to the Wii, and it takes about ten minutes, and I had just started. It normally doesn't take that long for the husband to feed the chickens, so when I was finished, I went to the door to let him know, thinking that he didn't want to disturb me. He was all the way past the fence and into the wooded area of the yard, but he still heard the door open and he looked over to yell, "We're missing a Rhode Island Red!"
"I'll be right out!" I responded.
I ran back inside, threw on some more clothes, because it is winter and I wasn't dressed appropriately. I hurried outside and began helping my husband search. We've gotten rather attached to these chickens and a number of horrible scenarios went through my mind. In fact, I was convinced that something horrible had happened and I went searching for her, because if she wasn't yet dead from whatever had befallen her, I was going to make sure she didn't suffer.
The husband and I searched for some time before finally giving up and heading back up the hill to the house. When we got past the trees and into a clearing, the mom was at the top of the hill and she yelled, "I found her!"
The husband is much faster than I am and he took off towards the mom while I yelled out, "Is she alive?!"
Mom responded, "I think so!" That spurred the husband to move even faster and I had no hope of catching him. I huffed my way up the hill. On my way, I saw the missing Rhode Island Red run from the mom and the husband, looking very disgruntled. Then I heard both of them laugh aloud in delight.
"What is it?" I managed.
"I just found nine eggs!" the husband roared.
We'd been under the impression that egg production was down as we were only getting three eggs per day rather than our standard five or six. Turns out our enterprising chickens were hiding them under a fallen tree and the "missing" chicken was attempting to brood them. This would be a fine plan except for the fact that they go into a coop at night and the temperatures have been well below freezing for several weeks.
Needless to say, we were thrilled to find our chicken alive and well and to get the early Easter bonus of nine eggs. We have some awesome, though nutty, chickens.
