Originally published April 29, 2012
Jack London wrote a book more than a century ago, "The Call of the Wild." It's about this big dog named Buck that gets kidnapped and sent to Alaska to pull a sled. Great book.
At the end off the book, Buck finally has found a home with a master he trusts and loves. But he keeps sensing this call from deep in the forest, and he takes longer and longer spells when he goes into the wild to run with the wolves.
Finally, he chooses that life.
Well, I wouldn't have expected that to happen with a chicken, but I reckon it has.
Of Lucy and Ethel, our Barred Rock hens, Ethel has always been the adventurous one. No matter what haphazard attempts I've made to secure the chicken pen, every day she has jumped out, wandered around the woods for a while, then come and jumped back in the pen to roost at night.
The other chickens clucked at her like they've never heard of such a thing and she ought to be ashamed, but she didn't seem to care.
Starting about three weeks ago, Ethel started staying out all night. She would wander back into the yard in the afternoon and demand to be fed, then disappear again. At first we figured she must be the chicken equivalent of a teenager and tried to impose a curfew, but she ignored it.
Finally, I had to face it: Ethel's hearing the Call of the Wild.
She stays away for longer and longer stretches. I haven't seen her this time since last Sunday.
We know she's still alive because our youngest, Sally, is able to find her eggs. Sally prances in from deep in the forest with a light brown egg gingerly held in her mouth.
She takes the egg into the house and guards it on my side of the bed, growling and rolling her eyes at anybody who tries to collect it.
(Just for the record, Sally is a miniature pinscher, not a human child.)
You don't want to get in bed without a thorough inspection at my house. If it isn't a cool looking bug, it's the back half of a squirrel, a Bigfoot's foot or a chicken egg. We go through a lot of sheets.
I have never heard of a chicken going to live with its wild distant cousins, but that must be what is happening.
I imagine chickens hear a different call of the wild than dogs do. I don't think Ethel would have gotten very far running with wolves.
That brings up the question of what kind of critters she really is hanging out with these days. It would be nice to think it's something dignified, like owls, but since they can fly and she can't, I doubt it.
Same goes for eagles, hawks and falcons. Even if they refrained from eating her, she'd quickly get left behind.
So I'm thinking Ethel must be running with turkeys.
This turkey season we've been printing a lot of young-hunters-with-turkeys pictures in the newspaper. I've been waiting for somebody to submit a photo of a confused looking youth posing with a small black and white chicken, but it hasn't happened yet.
Much as I would hate to lose little Ethel for good, it would be a kick to see the look on the kid's face.
Until that photo comes in, I'll continue to picture her leading her pack of turkeys at a lope through the forest, their beaks upraised in defiance of law and man.
Run, Ethel! Run!
Ken York is the assistant editor of The Daily Record. Past columns and other writings may be viewed on his blog at http://ken-york.blogspot.com/.
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