Farmer for a day: the chicken escapade

Lisa Phelps
Posted 10/15/24

Sometimes life takes twists and turns, and unexpected things happen. Last week I had one of those days, and it has really been good for some laughs. In the December 6, 2023 issue of the Platte County …

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Farmer for a day: the chicken escapade

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Sometimes life takes twists and turns, and unexpected things happen. Last week I had one of those days, and it has really been good for some laughs.
In the December 6, 2023 issue of the Platte County Record-Times, I shared a story I had made up to tell my kids at naptime about six brave chicks who left their pen and figured out how to drive a truckload of corn to the chicken pen so all the chickens could have breakfast – which they used teamwork to accomplish – right before the farmer came out to feed them!

Early in the morning last weekend, I received a call from my dad. He had parked a load of beets in the yard overnight so he could deliver them to the beet dump first thing in the morning, which he did, but when he stopped to dump his load, he looked in his mirror and one of our chickens had decided to roost on the truck instead of going back to its pen.
He collected the chicken and put her in the truck with him. That chicken must have really wanted to be a farmer. It rode in the seat next to him while he drove, and only jumped down when he stopped for a few minutes to peck at some corn on the floor, leftover from corn harvest season. Then it would get back up on the seat.
Of course, there was a “chicken rescue” operation yet again involving my daughter (remember – she was on the cat-rescue mission mentioned in my column published in March). She reported, the chicken was easy to catch, and it was an uneventful trip back to the farm. “All the way home the chicken just sat in my lap, as I fed her small pieces of a waffle all the way home,” she said.
This whole escapade really has had my head turned as I ponder – did I really make up that story about the six brave chicks? Maybe this one got a taste of life as a farmer, grew up and decided to try it again. What do you think?