Iddly went broody July 10, 2017

Today I took a walk with my friend Kathy along the Marin Cross Trail.  It links the Platform Bridge Road with Samuel P. Taylor State Park. It’s flat, shady, and wide enough for two friends to have a conversation.  We caught up on my trip to Rome and what is happening in Point Reyes Station.  Then I asked Kathy about her chicken who had been ill.  She died on July 5^th, Kathy said.

The chicken’s name was Iddly, and Kathy proceeded to tell me all about chicken husbandry, how unfertilized chickens never-the-less lay eggs every day, and how sometimes chickens think they’ve laid a fertilized egg and start brooding, a 21-day sitting-on-their-egg process that assumes the eggs will hatch. 

Iddly was a chicken who often went “broody”, and Kathy and her husband took advantage of that trait to introduce three chicks into the clutch in their yard.  They carefully placed the babies under Iddly, and she was excited to see her presumptive offspring, caring for them and keeping them warm.  All three made it to adulthood.

But at age four and a half, Iddly got sick, and last week she died in Kathy’s arms.