I’m always a little amused with our neighborhood. It’s pretty urban, and besides our neighbors who have a pet pig named Penelope, it only has cats and dogs. The other day though, we were all getting ready to sit down for breakfast, when we heard a commotion in the living room. Miss Piggy and the cats were excited to see we had a new visitor on the yard. A chicken.

We locked the cat door to keep the animals inside, and tried to figure out where the chicken came from. Big T was unfortunately knocked out of The Great Chicken Race early, because he jumped and landed his foot on a lone sprinkler head. Little T couldn’t help, because he would have frightened the chicken with his enthusiasm. He wanted to be included though, so we gave him the task of making sure the animals inside the house didn’t get out of control. He took this job very seriously, and every once in a while we’d hear a little voice shouting, “STOP LOOKING AT THAT CHICKEN”!!!

With the help of Erica (my friend and chicken expert) we decided to build a chicken trap. First we put out some chicken food and led a trail to a cage with the hopes that the chicken would run inside. The chicken didn’t go for the food, but instead decided to eat Theo’s pretend corn, which for some unknown reason, happened to be in the backyard near the chicken on this day.

And here is the empty cage….chickenless….

Then we decided that maybe we could use broom sticks to encourage the chicken to go into the cage. At this point, our neighbor who helps with our yard showed up and saw my mom and I in the backyard trying to get the chicken into the cage with the broomsticks. My mom shouted over to him, “do you know how to catch a chicken?” He mumbled something about coming back later and quickly retreated the way that he came.

After our attempts to get the chicken into the cage with the broom failed, we decided we needed to kick things up a notch. We built a more elaborate chicken trap using our old vegetable garden beds….

I was actually really impressed with myself for coming up with this trap, and Big T wobbled out and whispered….”I think this might work”. Heh heh, that’s why you married me, Big T. For my chicken catching skills. 😉 My mom stood in the vegetable bed to keep the chicken from flying over it, while Big T wobbled around and I tried to chase the chicken into the chicken trap. Unfortunately, after about 10 minutes of this, the chicken grew tired of us and flew into the neighbors yard, the yard with all the big dogs. She was in there for less than a second before we heard dogs barking and she retreated to the roof of our neighbors house.

We all had a busy day and pretty much forgot about the chicken, but then later that night, we had to get into the car to run an errand. Little T was shouting at us to look and was pointing down the street. I was the only person to turn and look and realize that the chicken was over there, crossing the road. :insert chicken road crossing joke here:

I ran down the street to snap a photo. You can barely see him, but he is walking in the distance off into the sunset, with a sense of freedom in his step. Needless to say, I think the chicken had a good day. 😉

Take care, little chicken. I hope you find what you are looking for. 🙂