Chicken Run

I had just opened up my 1-year olds muddy diaper when the lights to her room went off. I was ready to accuse my 3-year old son of playing a trick on me when I found him on the floor beside me playing cars. I used all of my diaper changing abilities to make sure I was excrement free, and then I checked a couple of other lights in the house, no electricity. The sun hadn't made it's appearance through the rain clouds, so I lit a couple of candles and we went on with our day.

We were twenty minutes into the power outage when I realized the glow from the chickens heat lamp in the garage was off. My solution was to put warm water in a sealed canning jar so they could huddle around it for warmth. When we went outside to give them this hot water bottle, the flattened piece of aluminum that we used as a door was moved and two chickens were missing. I looked around and found one huddled into the feed sack, but with much looking couldn't find the other bandit. We went back inside to await the electricity, which didn't make it's return for another hour.

The chicken hunt began with the boys lighting the low hiding places around the garage. The search moved to the high dark corners, but the bandit was much better at hide and seek than we were. A few hours later, my husband did a thorough search. When he came back empty handed he asked me if she could have gotten out of the garage. Surprisingly, I said yes. I left the door open for light when the electricity was out. We accepted that our two week old chicken had succeeded in her chicken run.

Today we went to the garage to do morning chicken chores, and that bandit chicken was wedged between the chicken wire of the pen and the wall. She was trying to soak up the warmth from the heat lamp. She looked a little frazzled, but otherwise happy and healthy. She went straight for the water and feed once home. She had been missing for almost 48 hours, and thankfully wasn't dinner for the neighborhood cats. Now if we could just figure out where she was hiding?