A missing hen

I hate to follow up my last happy post with this one, but sometimes plot twists like this just come out of the blue.

Tonight when I went to shut the girls up in their coop, I noticed Freebie wasn't among them. It was odd, because the hens were already on their roosts by 7:00 pm, much earlier than most nights. I figured Freebie would be back by nightfall, so I left the coop door open for her. When I returned to check after the sun had set, the head count was, sadly, the same. Reluctantly, I closed the door and hoped for the best.

It's possible that she got a little lost and is roosting up in the pine trees somewhere, but I have a sinking feeling that that's just not the case.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't distraught over this. We did lose two chicks earlier this year to a genetic problem, but there was closure because we knew what had happened. In this case, I'm finding it harder - who knows where Freebie is, or what may have happened to her? Who knows if another one of the hens might be next?

The important thing is to keep reminding myself that this is what I signed up for when I picked up that box of peeping chicks back in March. The good - watching the birds live a natural life under the sunshine, eating grass and bugs and berries - inevitably comes with the bad - a night of scouring the yard with a flashlight, calling the name of a much-loved, little lost bird. That's just the way it is...