Crazy, cheeky Chicken!

On Friday, I mentioned that one of our hens had gone AWOL. I was a little upset to be honest, especially when I had to tell L that her hen had gone away and she burst into tears and was inconsolable for the rest of the evening.  When we got the chickens for my birthday last year, J and L decided that one of the hens was mine, one was J's, and one was L's.  J and L both love the chickens but Lou is besotted with Snowy...

On Thursday, M came home from work and let the chickens out, as usual. In the time that it took him to get their eggs out of their house, Snowy had disappeared. She is the cheekiest, most likely to escape chicken out of the lot of them. Part of the problem is that she is skinny that she can squeeze through gaps so small that you wouldn't think it possible for a hen to fit through. I have lost count of the amount of times I have had to go and collect her from the house at the bottom of the lane. Anyway, she didn't come home on Thursday, I looked everywhere for her, M went off on his bike trying to find her. No luck. I was convinced that if she hadn't been got by a fox in the night, she would be in the garden on Friday morning. She wasn't. We shouted her some more, looked in more unusual places and still nothing. On Saturday morning, convinced that she had been eaten, I rang the local pet food shop to see if anyone had been in to say that they had found her. The woman on the phone seemed really bemused; 'Out since Thursday? Pah, the fox will have got her by now...' Yep thanks for that helpful comment, I think so too but I was just hoping!!!

On Saturday, after I had dragged myself out of my poorly pit, I went into the garden, let the other two chickens out and shouted Snowy as I had done every day since she had gone missing and out of nowhere she came, running towards me!!!  I couldn't believe it!

It was all really confusing. We didn't understand how she could have been out so long without us knowing and without old foxie loxie who we know is around about sometimes, finding her. I daren't let her out since she came home yesterday but after lunch today I asked M to watch her when I let them out in the hopes of her showing him where she had been hiding and sure enough she did....

Can you see her hiding in the hedge? This is at the bottom of our garden, we had been standing next to it, looking into it for the last three days trying to find her! When M took her out, he found this....

12 eggs! It would seem she had decided that her hen house wasn't good enough for laying eggs in so she made her own nest! She even had two of Mildred's eggs in there. Cheeky Miss Snowy but it's good to have you home!