My Chicken Story!

Even though my mom grew up on a farm, I (Jenny) do not have much farm experience. I'm a suburb-girl, so-to-speak. Well here at Scott many of my neighbors raise chickens. The poor economic situation is wide-spread, so chickens may not get fed. I'm learning to cook with gas and I have two very messy eaters. In an effort to waste less, I asked my nearest neighbor if her chickens would eat some bread that went moldy. She was so appreciative that I thought it might be a good learning experience for the boys to help me give the chickens our bread, muffin, pancake, and other scraps that are burned or hit the floor. In my embarrassment of how much I felt like we were wasting, I asked if we might be able to just feed the chickens ourselves. Milka was agreeable. She said to open the cage and feed them quickly so that none of them get out. The first day we tried feeding the 3 chickens went just fine.
The second day, the chicken who looks really mean because she doesn't have feathers on her neck, stepped on another chicken's head and pushed her out the door while I was emptying the bag. Uh oh! I don't know how to catch a chicken! I've never had to catch one before. The boys start yelling and laughing because they were so excited that the chicken had escaped. That scared the chicken and she started running. I called for Baraka (the 7 year old son of Milka) to come help me. He had been watching out the window as we were feeding the chickens. He comes running out of the house with his 4 year old sister and 4 friends. They all start yelling and kind of herding the chicken and kind of chasing the chicken around. After about 15 minutes they all got bored and left. I'm still stuck with a scared chicken who is not in her cage. I sent Isaiah home for another burned donut to try to entice the chicken closer to the cage.
After another few minutes that seem like a very long time, another adult sees the situation and has pity on me. He enlisted 2 boys who were closer to 12 years old to help me. That chicken continued to elude us for at least a half hour. They had to catch her hiding in some flowers. They held her wings so she couldn't flap and then held her legs together, then picked her up and safely put her back into the cage.
Even though I have now seen how to catch a chicken, I'm not excited to try to feed them again. Maybe I have to get over my pride and hand over my burned and "wasted" food.
The big boys who helped me were rewarded with the biggest suckers that the nearby candy shop had. That cost me about 25 cents. What a huge blessing to me! That chicken is worth way more the my neighbor than 25 cents. I got to talk to her later and she smiled, she had of course already heard the story.