Bald Jenny started it. In any given population of sentient beings, there seems to invariably be someone like her. For example, when I was a small child helping my mother in the kitchen, I asked her what would happen if I ran the paring knife under my fingernail. “You’ll cut yourself,” she said, in her unimaginative way. I was surprised to discover immediately afterward that her prediction was exactly accurate.

Bald Jenny, like me, was not one to listen to practical advice. She was a hen with a dream. This dream was to lay an egg somewhere other than the only suitable place to lay one, the nestbox. I had my own ideas, an obvious one about collecting eggs, and also a desire to not have my hens picked off by our resident bobcats and coyotes. With increasing frequency Bald Jenny managed to slip between my legs and run off into the forest, where she frolicked about, refusing all blandishments, while I waded through the poison oak trying to catch her, cursing her species.

One familiar day, despite all my care, she eluded me again. I said heeere chickchickchick and shook the grain can and she rustled deeper into the underbrush, chortling to herself.  Yes, I was mad. I didn’t want to get into that poison oak yet again. So I whistled, and called ‘Bonnie, Bonnie Come!’ and immediately streaking up the path came my little dog. She weighed about as much as the hen at that time, being twelve weeks old. I said, ‘well, Bonnie, they said you were a working dog, let’s see you work. Go get that hen.’

Bonnie looked at me seriously. Even as a puppy she could look quite serious. She knew about four commands, not one of them covering the present situation. I said, more desperately, ‘Git her! Bring her here! Fetch!’ Bonnie’s head jerked around, focused on the rustle in the bushes. ‘Yeah, git her!’ I said encouragingly. She took off.

There was a horrible squawking, and Bald Jenny emerged from the underbrush at an indignant run, racing up the path to the coop, with Bonnie trotting interestedly after. I held open the pen door, while the other hens peered around my legs, hoping to make a break for it. Bald Jenny ignored the door, squeezed into the narrow angle between the coop and the pen, where she was out of my reach, and flattened herself into a stubborn immovable blob. Bonnie stood and looked at her.

‘Git her outta there Bonnie’, I said, without the slightest idea what she would do. Bonnie edged up, took Bald Jenny’s tail feathers in a tentative grip, and started backing up, dragging her out of her hole. When Jenny had been pulled entirely clear I told Bonnie to turn her loose, and she did. Jenny ran between my legs into the pen, completely chastened. I turned to Bonnie and said, for the first time in my life,

‘That’ll do.’