An Old Friend

I was uploading pictures from my mom's camera this weekend when I stumbled across this goody taken a year ago. That's Claire, the most beautiful chicken that I have, and ever will own. Claire had a tragic flaw....well actually she had two tragic flaws. 1.) She could not see through her lovely hat of feathers. 2.) She was dumb as dirt.
In the time that I had her, I had to rescue her about 548 times. She would follow the chickens away from the hen house into the pasture and then lose track of her friends and get lost. Her solution was to walk around in circles and make a noise that sounded like: "eat me....eat me...eat me". Soooo....I would come scoop her up and take her back to the hen house.
One time she was gone for two days and I was certain she was gone forever. Then one morning Jason found her nested in the middle of THE ROAD on his way to work.

In the week or so before her disappearance, I had thought that she had wizened up. She would mainly just hang around the hen house, often sitting in the doorway while her friends were away. I began calling her "the gate guard". One Friday afternoon she decided to follow the other chickens down to the creek bed. She never came back. My husband looked for her, only to find a bunch of her feathers. We suspect a bobcat got her.

I guess her beauty came at a cost. I really loved her, though.