Hen Peck

I have gone to the park several times this week and have not seen the chicken. Since it's new habit seems to be standing in the road, I keep feeling certain it will get hit... or it will disappear and I will never know what happened to it... did it get squashed on a week, like this coming one, where I will be out of town, and there will be no telltale signs left as dust returns to dust? Has someone scooped him up for dinner once night (hey, in these parts, it could happen). Did the chicken indeed cross the road successfully and take up residence in a more protected area by the golf course? I would search and search and never know.

So the other day, I had just decided to dump all the cracked corn I bring for him to feed a set of 5 mallard siblings who eagerly gobbled it up and grow stronger for it... and I finally see the chicken in the same old place, pecking at the grass. And my bag is empty, grrr. Is she subsisting on insects alone? Am I the only one feeding her anymore?

I go home, I think about her, I am back the next day at sunset, when all is quiet and I see her. This time I have plenty of corn. I shot this first part from afar so you can see what an oddity it is to have a lone black hen in the middle of a parking lot beside a major street.




Right after I stopped shooting, the chicken spots me and comes RUNNING. I wish I'd caught it on tape but feeding her was more important to me and I didn't want to scare her away. Those toothpicks for legs coming at me so fast... hysterical.



I poured a pile that was way too big, on the side of the curb so she would be far away from the busy street... Doh! I should have put it UP on the SIDEWALK! I sat there in the quiet, with the sun going down, just the hen and me, waiting for the hen to eat it all, feeling satisfied for at least another day.


So opinions please..... I'm thinking of bringing a net and a carrier and catching the chicken in hopes that one of the rehabbers in the Wildlife Center will give it a home. I can't help but think it's stressful with no real cover having to hunt and pick for food... around traffic, hiding from the crowds at the zoo (it's a madhouse most days), having no other company of it's own kind.

Or is the hen happy being wild and free? Someone clearly had in their yard -- maybe got it as a chick for Easter and found it wasn't fun once it was bigger -- and dropped off at the park. Remember, it used to have shelter in an overgrown covered shack that once housed the children's train that runs around the park. That was all bulldozed and now is completed, and the chicken has no where to go... Can it be happy in the parking lot nearby, right next to the busy street and zoo? It's hard to know what's the right thing to do.