We’ve got a real situation on our hands here people. These chickens…well, one chicken in particular…is an escape artist. And I don’t know if anything will hold her down.

This all started last week when I received a phone call from my lovely neighbors, Sam and Steve.

“Your dang chickens are in our yard!” 

Fortunately, Steve is incredibly good-natured and was laughing as he broke the news on my voice mail.

You can watch me tell the rest of the story at my day job below.

I wedged the broken fence post back into position and even placed a birch log at the base to ensure there would be no more impromptu pathways for my chickens to explore.

I was feeling quite resourceful.

But this problem is far worse than I thought.

Jay walked in the door the other day.

“So, hey…I just talked to Tim.”

Other next door neighbor Tim.

“Oh, what did he have to say?”

“Well,” Jay continued. “He says there’s often a chicken in his yard.”

As in, a chicken besides this one decorating his side of the fence.

I was horrified. But it turns out, Tim doesn’t mind one bit. He told Jay the hen in question flies up to the chain link fence that separates our yard, roosts on it for a while, then hops on over to search for bugs and snip off the tips of the blades of grass making up Tim’s lawn. Sometimes she even wanders one house further.

“It’s okay,” Tim said. “She likes to talk to me and I talk to her too.”

“How many chickens?” I demanded to know. “Are all of them roaming the neighborhood?”

“No,” Jay replied. “Just one. Tim says it’s just the white one.”

Roz.

Of course it’s Roz! Anyone who has chickens will tell you that they all have individual personalities. Just watch my flock of birds for a few minutes and you’ll know without question that Roz is the ringleader. She’s the boss. She talks the most. She runs to me when I walk to the yard carrying snacks. And if I had to choose one of my birds to rebelliously fly the coop, it would definitely be her.

I saw it for myself the next morning.

There she is. On Tim’s back driveway. Acting like she owns the place. And chatting with the other two through the fence. Unbelievable.

Like any good chicken parent, I marched right out there to give that bird a piece of my mind. She knew exactly why I was in such a huff. She flapped her wings and landed on the top of the fence.

I gently tossed her back into her home yard.

That’s it, I thought. We have to clip her wings.

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To be continued…

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