The Case of the Missing Hen

Not all who are lost want to be found. (A more hopeful story in what feels like a very heavy and heart-breaking world right now.)

When Ric and I first moved to our ten acres of pure potential on the Mornington Peninsula, one of the first things we did, was get chickens. Four Hyline Brown egg-laying girls, each with a coloured ring on her leg so they could be identified and named by the grandkids: White for Pandy Pop-pop, Blue for Ocean, Green for Lorna and Red for Snowflake (grand-daughter Bella’s hen). Later we added five more to the flock, no rings, no names. Too many to remember.

Our chooks are the best pets — busy, social, ridiculous and sweet. They turn the soil, eat the grubs and give us delicious eggs in return. I love them much more than I expected to. Probably more than I should.

They’ve become free rangers in the afternoon often joining us on the porch as we rest on the couch or popping up at the window of the creative room where I write. Their quizzical looks make me smile. Perhaps they’re wondering why I’m sitting at a desk instead of digging the soil and turning up snails for them.

They have their own deluxe chicken-coop aptly named Chook Palazzo. Ric built it with his bare hands with pinewood milled from the land and with a whole lot of love, patience and persistence.

It’s our golden rule during the long winters to lock up our sweet friends by 5pm. Never after dark. Because that’s when the foxes come out to kill. Or when the powerful owls sweep silently through the trees hunting for their evening meal. Or when an off-leash dog along the road might suddenly find their hunting instincts.

This particular evening, we got distracted. It was 5:30pm before we wandered up to the Palazzo. We called them in, like always, and they came running — little claws scratching across the dirt, wings flapping, feathers puffed with pride and purpose. Eight of them, anyway.

One was missing. Bella’s Snowflake.

Anxious to find her before she became dinner for a wily fox, we did a lap of the property. Called. Searched. Looked under shrubs and behind trees. But there was no sign of her. She of the rich brown plumage and gentle curiosity was nowhere to be found.

We locked the rest away and went back inside, heavy with the kind of sorrow that comes not just from anticipated loss, but from knowing it was our fault. I sat by the fire, picturing her taken, caught by sharp teeth or strong talons. Dying alone, terrified. I even went out again at 10pm with a torch, scanning the bushes, hoping she’d be standing there waiting, repentant and cold. But still there was no sign of her.

That night I didn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, plagued by thoughts of what we might find the next morning. Feathers. Entrails. A carcass? Plagued also by the idea of our whole flock being pillaged. If a fox got a taste with Snowflake, would the rest survive? If we wanted them to be free-range and therefore truly happy, would they be picked off one by one until there were none?

In the grey light of early morning, we put on our boots and went straight out, heart braced to face the worst. We rounded the corner to the Palazzo — and there she was. Snowflake. Scratching outside the coop without a care in the world. Busy. Unbothered.

I was both astonished and tearful with joy.

Photo: Bella and Nonno with Snowflake in the summer holidays.

She hadn’t been lost. She hadn’t been taken. She hadn’t needed finding.

Snowflake had simply spent a night away. Alone. Unseen. Unaccounted for. She'd stepped into something more ancient and unpredictable. Something outside the confines of the coop and our control.

She’d had a night of wildness.

What struck me, even more than the fact she survived, was how calm she was. She wasn’t rattled. She wasn’t injured or panicked. She was fine. Like she knew something we didn’t.

And maybe she did.

Later that day, I remembered something too. A night of my own just two years ago, when I did a 24-hour vision quest in the wilderness as part of an immersive nature course. No fire. No tent. No food. No one nearby.

Just me, a mat beneath me, a sleeping bag and an immense sky that did not care I was there. I wasn’t comfortable. I wasn’t stressed. But I was alive, awake, alert yet somehow held by the land. And I came back from that night changed. Just a little stronger and a little more aware that we are not in control— that we don’t own life. We just get to witness it and adapt to it.

Maybe Snowflake did the same. Maybe she tucked herself up on the crook of a low branch and just waited, utterly still, while the moon moved overhead and the predators passed her by. Maybe she too felt the awe of being alone and tiny under the stars, yet somehow safe.

I like to think she claimed something that night. A sliver of freedom. A brush with untamed nature. A reminder that even here, in their well-tended and safe Chook Palazzo, the wild still calls.

We think we’re in charge, that if we lock the gate on time and do all the right things, we can keep everyone safe. But we can’t. Not always. The wild has its own rules. And sometimes, the ones we think need protecting just slip into the dark and come back stronger.

So now, every time I see Snowflake pecking for grubs and scratching around in the autumn leaves, I smile a little. Not just because she made it. But because she knows something the rest of us have forgotten.

That safety isn’t everything.
That wildness lives on.
And that sometimes, the ones we think are lost are just out there finding themselves.