The Great Poultry Rescue

Since my last post was pretty sad, I thought I'd relate a happier story that involves an animal rescue. In this case, the animal was a bird or more specifically a chicken. Those of you who don't live in a rural environment might not be familiar with the phenomenon of poultry dumping. Poultry dumping is the releasing of domestic chickens, most commonly roosters, to fend for themselves on some country lane. They will show up one day in your neighborhood, hang around crowing for a week or two because they have no home to go to and then the only evidence of their existence will be a pile of feathers because some raccoon or coyote had them for supper. You're probably wondering when this story is going to get happy. Just hang in there with me for a while more, I promise it will get better.

A while back, my sisters, Sue and Sally and their friend Sandy were up visiting for the weekend. Sally enjoys walking the dogs with me in the morning and we were out for our canine stroll in a nearby neighborhood when we spotted some loose chickens in the street in front of a house of an acquaintance of mine. One of the chickens, a speckled hen, had what appeared to be a large growth on her right foot. It was the size and color of a large baking potato. As you can imagine, it was not easy for her to get around with such a large mass on her leg. Talk about a ball and chain (without the chain)! Sally and I were pretty upset to see such a sight and as soon as we returned home, I phoned the gal who owned the house in front of which the chickens were roaming. She informed me that she no longer kept chickens and she didn't know where those particular birds came from and that was that.

Well, my sisters and I continued with our visit going off for the day, with my husband Paul as our chauffeur, to explore a nearby town. The vision of that hen with her affliction kept niggling at Sally and I so much so that we convinced Paul to take a detour on the way home to see if she and her companions had survived the day. We drove into the neighborhood and sure enough, there they were. Operation Chicken Rescue commenced. Paul parked and we quietly exited the van. The other chickens scattered, but the speckled hen, weighed down by her anchor was easily captured by me. We clambered back into the van with Paul driving, me in the passenger front seat holding a very nervous chicken and my sisters and Sandy in the back.

The short drive back to our house was relatively uneventful, except at the very end when we parked and the hen began to struggle, flap her wings and squawk in an alarming manner. I hung onto the distressed bird amid flying feathers, while the others opened the garage door and quickly set up a portable dog kennel we had in storage. Into the kennel the hen went, while we convened to access the situation. By this time, we realized that the mass was not an original part of the chicken and appeared to be made of dried mud. Perhaps we could gently chip away at it and eventually the rest of it would crumble and fall off. We decided that Paul would be the "doctor" in this operation and we would all be his assistants. We gathered the necessary tools, a towel to wrap the hen in so she couldn't flap her wings, a small screw driver, and a hammer. It was my job to calm the "patient" so we could carry out the procedure. So, with my sister and Sandy looking on, offering words of encouragement, I reached into the kennel and grabbed the hen and wrapped her body in the towel leaving only her head and the mass encased foot exposed. Paul took up the hammer, positioned the screwdriver near the edge of the mass and gave it a gentle tap. Nothing. He tapped again with more force, and again, nothing. It took a half an hour of banging (and I mean banging!) away using a chisel and larger hammer to begin to degrade that hunk of mud. We eventually did remove it all and the hen survived to tell the tale to her new coop mates. Although for the first few days, she looked like a plump, squat, speckled, flamingo as she held her leg aloft not being used to having it freed from that mud ball.

The question of what to name our new acquisition, came up almost immediately. Susan wanted to name her "Rocky" because of how hard and stone-like the mass had been. But she was overruled, by the rest of us. What do you call a chicken that had what looked like a large Idaho spud on her foot?

Tater.

The barn pictured in the painting below is a beautiful old structure located hidden amongst the trees in Ebey's Reserve in Coupeville WA.

Hidden Sheep Barn

7" x 5", oil on linen canvas, 2015

This painting is currently for sale at auction. 

Click to view Auction
(auction includes detail and framed views)