Sunday mornings are the time we most often have pancakes, eggs & bacon. I decided yesterday that I was not only going to make breakfast, but I was going to use some of the very ripe peaches waiting to be what's the cooking world word, these days: oh yes, repurposed. I was going to repurpose the peaches into something not totally other than what they were but different enough than eating them straight off of the pit. I thought about how I would do that all the way home from the church were I had preached. It was very quiet when I got in....the night before there had been a little bit of a confrontation with the teen girls in residence and it appeared as if they wanted to remain out of sight, out of mind. In the silence of mid-morning, I put the bacon on and began preparing the pancake mix. Yes, boxed...I wanted lunch done sooner rather than later. As I checked the bacon, the door bell rang and yes, without turning down the heat control I went to answer it. Living where we do, the person on the other side could have any number of reasons for being at the door but in the broadest stretch of my imagination I would not have guessed what he wanted. (It was a really good reason but my wishful thinking went unfulfilled...Bruce had not lost his way nor did my fairy godmother decide to surprise me.) Anyway - Bob was the one on the other side of the door and he said he had a weird story to tell me. I responded that I love weird stories so he continued. I walked outside and as I did saw 3 people standing alongside his car which he had parked by our driveway. It turns out that earlier that day, Bob noticed as he walked by the car a small pair of what looked like feet hanging out from underneath the car. He called his wife over and they discovered that attached to the feet was a small chicken. Bob - perhaps rhetorically, perhaps not, asked his wife Carolyn, what it was that was hanging from underneath the car. Her obvious response was, "it's a chicken." Which it indeed was....but Bob wanted to know what it was doing underneath their car. Carolyn remembered that on Thursday, she thought she had hit a chicken while driving past a farm but when she went to look, didn't see a sign of one running off nor did she see anything which would lead her to believe that the chicken and the car connected.
For the next 4 days, Carolyn and Bob went about their routine business as well as entertaining friends visiting from Oregon. They made their rounds throughout Columbia County as well Massachusetts to go grocery shopping and do vacation-like stuff in Great Barrington. Little did they know that they were being accompanied by a small fowl. Meanwhile, back at a certain farm in Columbia County - Rooster Haven Farm to be exact, one particular farmer, (that would be me) was trying not to indulge in another round of sorrow at losing a chicken. One of 3 chicks which had been born earlier in the season had just lost it's life after getting into the dog run - with the dogs in it. Sometimes the dogs ignore the chicks - sometimes not...in that case, not. So, it was a bit distressing that only a week after that loss did it seem as if another one of the survivors of a larger clutch had met her demise, although I couldn't be sure as she just completely disappeared. So, farm life goes on as loss is a very real part of it and there was nothing I could do. BUT - it was our farm that Carolyn had passed by when she thought she hit a chick and so retracing her route - came back with her hubby, friends and a little chick in a box...a chick they rescued from under her car. Carolyn - being a compassionate person felt so badly that she did not want to be the one to tell me that she thought she hit my chicken. That's why it was Bob at the door telling me this story of how that morning he saw the little chicken feet. When I looked in the box they had put her in, at first I thought it was one of our other chickens because it was on the small side. When I looked again, I realized it was Baby...baby chick. I couldn't believe it. I now have 2 stories of chickens that got hit and lived but I would never have guessed that not only could a chicken survive but live for 4 days - 4 whole days without food or water after being hit by a car. Not one of us could really wrap our heads around this small miracle. Carolyn's friend was hoping to see a heartfelt reunion between Mama & Baby or at least between Baby & her sister but that wasn't exactly in the cards. Mama had reached the point, earlier in the week of deciding the "babies" were old enough to be on their own and Sissy didn't seem to care one way or another what had happened to her sibling. Carolyn was just so thankful that the chick wasn't hurt and that I wasn't upset. I told her that I considered it something to be happy about, because a) the chick was ok & b) she cared enough to find out where it had come from. Of course what came my mind was that I along with countless others through the ages were able to rejoice over that which had been lost, was now found. With that, I offered them a dozen of our farm fresh eggs, and we all said good-bye. I went back to the house where I discovered some VERY crispy bacon. That was so repurposed that it wasn't going to be used for anything so out it went. I went back, put more bacon in the pan, mixed the pancake batter and cut the peaches which got turned into pancake topping. At that point Dave came home and our son came to the table and over brunch I told them what happened.
I don't know if there's a deeper meaning to be found in this event. Since this was the 2nd time this year a chicken survived being hit by a vehicle (Red & the truck) I am grateful for these little miracles. On the other hand, more chickens died after being hit than not, so who knows. That's what one would expect. I guess it's just an example of the fact that you just never know how something will turn out. And that's a rumination for another day. Welcome home Baby Chick.
