Thursday afternoon. Normal. Typical. Peaceful.

After lunch, we were standing in the family room/kitchen, talking a bit. Em described something and as I listened, I became totally distracted. Something caught my eye. “Wait! What was that?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Is that a rooster?” Em looked at me as though I’d been elected Queen of Looneyland. “What!? What are you saying?” he asked, without even bothering to turn around.

“Don’t make any sudden moves!” I warned, as I took his elbow to slowly pivot him in the direction of the door. “Am I crazy, or is that a rooster on our deck?” He hesitated momentarily, as if to actually consider the crazy part. Then he saw it too. “I’ll get the camera!”

While Em became a poultry paparazzo, I grabbed my shoes and headed down the alley, remembering that I’d previously heard clucking sounds in the neighborhood. “Someone around here keeps chickens. I just have to find out which neighbor and alert them about their recent escapee,” I reasoned to myself. But the alley seemed to be secure. There were no open gates or obvious breaches along the fence line. Finally, I found a neighbor, just returning from an outing and asked her who keeps chickens. “Two doors down!” she assured me and off I went.

I went to the front door and rang the bell.  A young man appeared. “Do you have roosters?” I asked. “No, we don’t,” came his answer. Hmmm. “Well, we have one in our yard!” I offered. He just stood there looking at me rather uncomfortably— the conversation seemed to be over. Then I asked, “Well . . .  do you have chickens? Maybe it’s a chicken and I just thought it was a rooster because of its large size and all the noise it was making.”

“Yes . . . we raise chickens.”

“Are they red?”

“Some are.”

I peered at him, as I slightly raised both my eyebrow, in an effort to encourage this Quiet Guy to offer more complete answers to my questions. Honestly, it was like pulling hens’ teeth. “Well, could you please come over and look at this chicken in our side yard to see if it’s yours? And even if you don’t recognize it, it’s pretty likely she’ll be yours anyway, since you’re the only poultry keepers in the neighborhood.”

“Okay.”

Then I hurriedly stepped off the porch as the door closed behind me. Looking back over my shoulder, I realized he wasn’t following. I decided to go on home. As I rounded the block to re-enter the alley, the Quiet Guy appeared from his back yard. I waved him down, and we went through our gate together into the forbidden and dangerous chicken zone.

“I wonder how she got out?” he said to no one in particular, when he saw the bird. He tried to corner her against the fence but she frantically fluttered her wings while letting out a frightening squawk. With a quick sidestep, she eluded his outstretched hands. She then darted to the other end of the side yard. At that moment, I saw that Em had left the door ajar when he’d gone to retrieve the camera. “Open door! Open door!” I shouted, but the panicky hen was faster than we were and she ran right into the family room. (Fortunately the doggies were snoozing in the sun upstairs, otherwise things could have gotten ugly.)

The Quiet Guy was in close pursuit through the family room. Finally he chased her into the bathroom. Obviously feeling cornered, the poor bird let out a few more screeches to ward off her pursuer, but to no avail. Because the space is so small, he quickly nabbed her. He checked the tag on her skinny little chicken ankle and announced, “Yeah, she’s ours.” Then, with a puzzled look on his face and a quizzical tone in his voice, he wondered aloud, once again, about how she could have possibly gotten out. Hmmm. He was completely bewildered by her escape.

It really didn’t matter, we assured him. Everyone seemed to be satisfied with the outcome. Quiet Guyturned toward us and volunteered, “I’ll ask my mom to call you to apologize.” We told him there was really no need. But then, I thought of something . . . “Do you sell eggs?” He answered that indeed they do. When it comes to eating “locally,” I’m pretty sure that across the alley qualifies. The afternoon chase was a “win-win”—Quiet Guy recovered his wayward chicken and we got the promise of fresh eggs. I love happy endings!

Following is a short video of our afternoon adventure: