Opie has been very good to his chicken. The chicken has laid regular eggs and seems very content, especially since she is out of the path of Father and his overzealous love machine behavior. The chicken also has the ability to fly into Earnest's stall and out the back door to freedom, and if she chooses to do this, in order to be outdoors or back with the flock, that will be her statement to me.
I told Opie,
"I have decided you can keep your pet chicken, but if she shows she wants back with the flock, that will be her choice."
"Then will I go live with the flock?" he asked.
"No, you are not a chicken, you live in here with the goats," I said.
"But she is not a goat and she is living in here as a chicken with goats," he responded.
Good grief.
It is very seductive when you write a blog, and have a bent for story telling, and an over active imagination, to let these things get carried away. The last think I want to do is to have the chicken become some kind of blog prop. She is after all a chicken and I want her to remain a chicken, and be...well, chicken like.
But I have to tell you, she seems to enjoy her new altered life of living separate from the flock. And she can at anytime be with them, and can see them too through the chicken wire walls that are at the end of the goat barn. When I put down Opie's breakfast yesterday, I was amused at how polite he was with his chicken, actually stopping to let her eat a bit before he devoured his food like any healthy goat. Was I imagining this? I don't think so.
Opie was enamored, for a brief moment, with his chicken's egg. It being Easter and all he assumed it was an Easter miracle.
"Are you a rabbit, too?" he asked his chicken.
"No, I am a pure chicken," she said.
I think for now, she is happy. So I told Opie,
"Do you want your chicken to have a name? I will leave it up to you."
We shall see.
