There’s an old joke that my dad told us about a man that went on a long trip and entrusted his friend with the care and keeping of his aging mother and his cat. Every night, the man would call and ask his friend how his mom and cat were doing. The friend would assure him that everything was fine. This went on for a while.
Then, one evening, when the man called and asked about his cat, the friend said, “Your cat is dead.”
“What! Why would you just come out and say that?” He was very distraught. “When you have bad news like that you have to ease me into it. On the first day, you say the cat is on the roof and you can’t get her down. On the second day, you tell me the cat fell off the roof and is at the vet. Then on the third day you tell me the cat is dead.”
The friend apologized for upsetting him. The man then asked, “How is my mom?”
The friend said, “Well, she’s up on the roof and we can’t get her down.”
When I was growing up on the cattle ranch, I was obsessed with our friend’s chickens. My dad built me a chicken house and our friend gave me some chicks. I was in love. Every chicken had a name. There was Penny, a Rhode Island Red; Buffy, a Buff Orpington (big, fluffy, yellow feathers); Mama Seuss, an Araucana (lays green eggs – name self-explanatory); two roosters named Bruce and Mr. Butler, and four Golden Laced Polish hens (the Polies had black feathers edged in gold on top of their heads – they looked to me like Vegas show girls).
Every morning I would go out and open their coop and they would roam around the ranch all day, eating grasshoppers and ants and any other bugs they could find. I always knew when they laid an egg because they would start cackling and making all sorts of racket. They had laying boxes in the chicken house, but sometimes they liked making a nest in the hay stacks, or out in the tall grass somewhere. I would go and hunt for them because we have coyotes and other predators around. We didn’t need to attract them by offering free snacks.
Every evening, the chickens would all make their way back to their roost and settle in for the night. I would go out and count them to make sure they were all safe and sound before I locked the door. Sometimes, one of the hens would start brooding and find a nice hiding place to try and hatch her chicks. Then the search was on. Nine times out of ten, they would be found close by.
One night, when I went out to shut them in, I counted and all four of the Polish hens were missing! I searched all the usual places but no luck. It was getting dark and I started to panic. I went to the house and enlisted the help of my sister. We scoured the ranch with flashlights. Not a feather to be found. I was on the verge of tears as we went back to the coop to shut the remaining birds in. I hated the thought of what might happen to them overnight.
Trying to be comforting (?) my sister said, “Maybe they’re on the roof and just can’t get down.” We looked up and all four of those hens were roosting on top of the door!