A glimpse of the chicken was enough to make Robyn Smiley and her longtime boyfriend Max Nye circle back around Sunday at about 7:15 p.m.
“It is the last thing you expect to see in the middle of the city of Dayton or Kettering,” said Smiley, a Kettering resident who has raised and rescued birds most of her life. “I would expect to see that at my cousin’s house in Kentucky, but not here.”
Smiley and Nye tried unsuccessfully to capture the bird.
The local musicians later contacted The Montgomery County Animal Resource Center and the Kettering police in an effort to find help for the bird that’s virtually”landlocked” without a clear food or water source between the Little Beaver Creek, Delco Park Road, Delco Park and Woodman.
Neither Kettering police nor the resource center responded to calls concerning the chicken.
Smiley said she was told she could have the bird she describes as being as pretty as a show chicken if she could catch it. She’ll turn it over to a farmer if she does.
“My question is how in the hell did he get there to begin with,” Smiley said. “He didn’t just drive in. He got away from someone or he was abandoned.”
Alicia Walker, a receptionist with Kettering Animal Hospital, said the ‘he’ in this case is definitely a ‘she,’ and a beautiful ‘she’ at that.
The bird has laid eggs since first being spotted on the clinic’s property.
Walker said clinic staffers have tried to catch the bird, as has a sometimes constant stream of passersby.
“They stop and take pictures,” she said. “They tell their friends they tried to catch a chicken.”
The bird was not near the clinic this morning as it has been previous mornings, Walker said.
She hoped today that the bird had been captured by one of the rescue groups that had been trying to catch it.
Walker didn’t have specifics about those groups.
It is illegal to raise chicken in most area communities.
Walker suspects someone dropped the chicken off at the clinic hoping it would be helped.
“This is the first time I’ve seen something other than a dog or a cat (dropped off),” said Walker, who has worked at the clinic for 13 years.
Contact this blogger at arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com or Twitter.com/DDNSmartMouth
About the Author
