Front Porch: Miss Chicken finally mellowing a bit

Every summer I try to provide an update on Miss Chicken and her world – mostly because her ardent fans are quite insistent about it. So here is the semiannual report on life in the chicken yard where my formerly feral fowl now lives.

Miss C, at age 7, is now the second most senior girl in the flock of 16 previously problematic and largely unwanted chickens who live under the careful care of my friend Joan in Spokane Valley. Only Sparky, the 9-year-old banty, is older. Joan reports that things are well with her flock, and especially with Miss Chicken, a full-sized bird of undetermined heritage.

Over the winter Joan lost Josie, a Rhode Island Red, who she took in back in November 2012. Josie had been consistently pecked by others in her former flock and wasn’t thriving, but under Joan’s care, she recovered nicely. But three and a half years later Josie has died, despite veterinarian efforts to save her, and is now buried at the back of Joan’s property alongside other departed flock-mates.

There was quite an adventure earlier this month – the great escape. When Joan puts the girls to bed at night, she does a beak count before retiring herself. But one evening, the count came up one beak short. So she checked the usual hiding places outside the hen house, but nothing.

Not surprisingly, the missing bird was Princess, so named because of her demanding, impetuous and reckless nature. As Joan walked along the narrow path between the 12-foot-tall shrubs and the 6-foot chain-link fence separating her property from her neighbor, she saw a moving shadow – Princess. She was in the neighbor’s yard and creating a path of her own as she paced back and forth, apparently trying to get home again but unable to make it happen.

“I have no idea how she got over there,” Joan said. Princess then quickly squeezed through a hole in another neighbor’s 5-foot-tall mesh wire fence and was caught in a space between that fence and a large shop building.

So into action Joan went, not stopping to get help from her husband or even go to the neighbor for assistance. She put one ladder against her side of the fence and, once at the top of it, heaved another ladder over to the other side. She scooped up Princess and climbed back again, a rather precarious journey with one arm dedicated to holding onto a big chicken.

“OK, it was not the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done,” said Joan, who is about to turn 72, “but I was on a mission to get her back home.”

So Princess was rescued and returned safely to the roost. To avoid further evening escapes, before releasing her chickens into the free-range yard the next day, Joan made sure to clip the flight wings of all the full-size chickens.

One of the nicest things going on in the chicken yard for Joan is the time she spends each afternoon just enjoying her girls. She’ll take a glass of lemonade out with her, and usually some fruit or other tasty treat, and sit under an apple tree to watch the chicken follies.

“This time of year, when it’s sunny, some of them will lie on their sides, spread their wings and sunbathe, close their eyes and sleep,” she said. And, of course, they’ll come over to Joan to see just what kind of goodies she has to share with them.

Here’s where the nice news about Miss Chicken comes in. For the longest time, Miss C would have nothing to do with this interaction. Because she lived wild and on her own in my neighborhood for the first year of her life, this schmoozing with humans or even other chickens wasn’t for her.

“Now she’s one of the first to come over to check out the snacks. I can pet her briefly. She’s not so flighty. I know that her previous cautious behavior probably helped keep her alive, but I can see now that she is comfortable in the flock, that she’s OK and almost social. She’s gotten – for her – mellow.”

To that end, every night Miss C makes sure her three babies from last summer – the Partridge Rock chickens Penelope, Peaches and the bad-girl Princess – are on the top roost next to her, as is Miss Sophie, an Ameraucana, who was one of Miss C’s first babies several summers ago.

It’s only taken five and a half years, but it appears Miss Chicken finally feels at home.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@ ccomcast.net. Previous columns are available at spokesman.com/ columnists/.