As a spiritual seeker, I stayed for awhile in the 1990’s at a retreat center in Devon that was also an organic farm. Animals of course were a part of the scene.The community kept old rejected tough chickens, not for meat or eggs, but only to provide them with a retirement home. However, even when penned at night in their hen house, the seven of them were not safe when the neighboring fox had kits and needed more food for her offspring.
Every day the predator came back for a chicken, and soon we were down to one. On watch, we saw the fox snatch this last hen in her mouth. As she retreated back into the wild, we started to yell and scream at the audacity. The mother provider ran off after releasing her catch, by now a totally traumatized bird.
That escapee didn’t come out of her hen house for a couple of weeks. When she finally did reappear, it was only to soon disappear for 2-3 days at a time. Just when we were sure she was dead, she would show up outside the door at meditation time, and peck at the glass to get our attention. We named her Big Brown as she seemed to get bigger and more beautiful every day. Freedom definitely agreed with her.
Eventually we found that she had built herself a nest under the mulberry bush. Not to pass up this opportunity with a brooding hen, we went out and purchased twelve fertilized eggs to put under her. We then fenced in her new home. Three weeks later, she had a flock of 11 fluffy chicks beside her. By the time I left, Big Brown could not be distinguished from her brood. We had a whole new family to protect, and I still think of her story of surviving and thriving all these years later.