43 hens, 2 roosters, and 2 ducks.

That’s our roll call. Like any good Warden, we make sure that none of the inmates have flown the coop when we go into nightly lockdown.

Our neighbour friend up the road looked bemused when I told him this. He doesn’t count his chickens. He said that he couldn’t even tell us how many he had…but he does things with the efficiency of a farm business.

We are more like a chicken spa. If you believe in reincarnation, and

want to come back as a chicken, believe me, this is the place.

So one night earlier this winter, when the count came up one hen short, we immediately initiated our Chicken Search and Rescue Plan, which mostly consists of muttering under one’s breath and

the possible utterance of expletives, followed by trudging around the barn looking for the adventurous escapee.

I had climbed up one of our hay stacks because I thought that our barn cat, Mochi, had a man cave up up there. That’s when I spied her. She was a keener alright. She was nesting at the very top of one of the hay stacks, in the gap between bales that allows for air circulation. sitting on what had to be close to 40 eggs, most of them frozen and split. She had obviously been at it for a while, and must have been returning to the coop every night for headcount and finally got busted when she broke curfew.

Come to think of it, that probably explains the note to Chicken Santa that I found in the coop,  asking for a smartwatch and an electric heating pad.