And thus ends the months-long Chicken Saga comic! Thanks so much for staying tuned through thick, thin, and the holiday season. Although this tale has been a bit embellished (ok…maybe quite embellished), the story is real: One day I got a weird note from a neighbor in my mailbox claiming they had one of our chickens in the yard! Since we had no missing chickens, I was convinced they were hallucinating, or at least mistaking an unnaturally large mourning dove for a chicken in their bushes.
Sure enough, it was indeed a runaway chicken, they did indeed name her Dolly and yes, I did make Malcolm go and grab her after his work and classes in the middle of the night!
We were a bit unsure of how Dolly would fare at first. (This is partly why this story took so long to illustrate–I didn’t know how things would turn out and I was pretty much making these comics up on the fly.) For a little while, she wasn’t really doing that well. She had clearly lost a lot of weight during her wanderings and was extremely stressed and losing so many feathers the chicken coop looked like a ripped pillowcase for several weeks. She refused to eat, we weren’t sure how much she was drinking (if at all) and she had an injured beak, to boot. She spent most days wedged up on a high roost we made for her.
Slowly but surely her hunger and curiosity got the best of her, and the rest of the flock took to her quite well, all things considered. There were a few pecking-order skirmishes, but nothing other than the usual fowl brawl that happens now and again.
Now, I am happy to say that Dolly has gained back her lost weight and re-grown her feathers, which are coming in silky, cream-white, and fluffy! Even better? She is actually laying beautiful blue-green eggs in the middle of winter!
We love our Dolly, and I am so glad you, dear reader, could take part in this saga with us.
Long Days Drawn Out 