Golden Laced Stupid

[Geira]

So I’ve read some stories about golden lace Wyandottes that said they were mean. That has not been my experience luckily. Mine are actually pretty friendly with one who will sit in my lap and let me pet her but this is not her story. Her sister, Bella, is my runt. She is as pretty as the name suggests but she is the chicken equivalent of the supermodel who can’t figure out how doors work. She likes to fly over the yard fence, a four and half foot cattle fence with barbed wire at the top and electric fencing on the outside designed to keep the predators out and the chickens in. She flies out, panics, runs the fence line screaming like the sky is falling. She’s athletic enough to clear a 4–6 ft fence on a whim, but once she’s on the wrong side she completely forgets she has wings and just sprints back and forth until a human rescues her. She’s also the last one in the run when I’m giving them a treat. They all go inside and she’s running back and forth on the backside of the run where there isn’t a door. She could be twice as smart and she’d still be stupid. Bella = the gorgeous, athletic, zero-object-permanence escape artist who will literally starve two feet from the treat door because “the wall is solid today.” She’s never going to win Chicken Jeopardy, but she’ll lay beautiful eggs and look stunning doing it and I get to have a first row seat to one of the best comedy routines in town with the occasional need to carry her back into the yard like I’m trying to earn the Heisman trophy.