Business Chicken

This afternoon I checked on the chickens as usual and didn’t see Executive Presence (nee Bossy) anywhere. I figured she was laying an egg, so I opened the nest box door; the worried look they give you is fairly hilarious.

Not in there either, though. Uh oh. She’s hunched down in the main area of the coop and not moving. I pull the roof off and she’s definitely not well, she doesn’t put up a fight at all. Betsy and I sprung into action and rushed her to the chicken vet, but she expired right after we got her inside. Unlike Shy Chicken, who had egg binding, the vet suspects reproductive issues that commonly strike chickens as they age; she was coming up on her 6th birthday.

In happier days, making a dust bath.

She had a magnificently large personality in addition to the sweet black feathers with purple highlights and red underfeathers.

We’ll miss you, EP.

….but you can’t make them eat it. They are still eyeing it suspiciously.

A friendly passerby helps a chicken in need.

Marc Klein was walking his dog, Cocoa, last Wednesday morning in Central Park when he spotted something rustling in the fallen leaves near the park’s entrance at West 97th Street.

It was a feathered creature, but not one of the more commonly seen wild birds in the park. This was a chicken, a handsome, reddish bird that Mr. Klein quickly scooped up because some other dogs nearby seemed a bit too interested in the animal for its safety.

“You don’t really see chickens in Central Park,” said Mr. Klein, 49. “I thought the chicken might be someone’s pet, because it allowed me to get real close. But now I’m holding this bird, and I can’t just go and put it down, because these dogs might eat it.”

So he carried both Cocoa and the chicken home to his high-rise apartment on 97th Street, drawing a stare from his doorman, and another from his wife, Laura.

Unable to immediately reach animal rescue groups, Mr. Klein, an advertising creative director, put the chicken out on his terrace, 16 stories up, and rushed to finish a presentation that was overdue.

How to put a diaper on your chicken. No, really.