Community Corner
Backyard Chicken Flies the Coop
A bantam Rhode Island Red hen went missing in the Skinker DeBaliviere neighborhood, but thanks to online sharing, she was reunited with her owner.
A lost chicken in the Skinker DeBaliviere neighborhood sparked an online search that left Facebook followers running around like a…well, you know.
A neighbor found the bantam Rhode Island Red hen near the 6000 block of Pershing Ave. and asked neighbors online to help identify the owner. After a series of serious-yet-amused emails and Facebook posts, a neighborhood couple recognized the hen, which was reunited with its owner, Melanie Maynor.
Ben Spector, who found the chicken, thanked the dozens of neighbors who shared the news online to help bring Maynor's chicken home.
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“I’m amazed and delighted by how quickly this community mobilized itself,” Spector said on a neighborhood listserv. “I didn’t even have to hang any ‘found’ posters.”
Several families offered to adopt the chicken if the owner wasn’t found.
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“Urban homesteading is really catching on in St. Louis,” Spector wrote.
The hen was only missing for a day. Luckily, 24 hours is just enough time for some quality jokes about missing chickens. Here are our favorites:
"It escaped from Church's kitchen," wrote Taylour Carlile on the neighborhood's Facebook page.
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