Struttin’ Their Stuff in Harbor Park

By: Ellsworth resident - Keith Eaton

The chicken that adopted Keith and Nancy hanging out with the ducks in Ellsworth Harbor Park.

We’ve been adopted by a chicken. We first spied it in Harbor Park and Marina hanging with a bunch of ducks. Nancy said, “Poor chicken, it thinks it’s a duck.”

It started popping into the yard not long thereafter. It would wander up as we fed our local crows peanuts. We thought it was a hen as it would complacently cluck at the mixed birdseed Nancy offered up and sometimes fluff up a seat in the wood chips beneath the forsythia.

This chicken is definitely a runner, though. Every time we approached with a handful of snacks—our friend Katie gave us some dried worms, a baggie of crunchy pupa-phase treats—it would bolt into the adjoining thickets. We were advised to nab the chicken with a pool cleaning net. Or maybe we should toss a towel over it. But what would we do with it then?

Our neighbor Jon thought it might have been one of his chickens. This was a false alarm. He did offer to house it if we caught it. For a time, it looked as though we might: each morning, the wayward hen started showing up at our compost, dutifully awaiting a cup of sunflower seeds, peanuts, or the worms, “chicken crack,” the whisperers call it. We’d oblige, too, but she would keep her distance, running away just far enough to be safe. Still, this was progress.

One day, well into September, I was startled awake at dawn by a distinct sound. For a minute, I thought I was in Mexico or Guatemala where small-town mornings are punctuated by the boastful calls of los gallos. A rooster? What the . . . ? I ambled over to the river-facing window, and sure enough, issuing forth from somewhere near the gazebo, there it was: the distinct call of a rooster greeting dawn.

And here I could have sworn this was a hen. However, according to an astute freshman in one of my MDIHS social studies classes, herself a chicken farmer, swapping genders is a common occurrence for poultry. “If they’re overly stressed or the flock has lost the rooster, it’s not unusual for a hen to transition. They can even get to the point where they fertilize eggs.”

Well, I’ll be! Suddenly, the chicken who adopted us became much more interesting. Morning visits now are reduced to weekends, though, as we leave for work just when dawn is breaking. My neighbor sent me a text at work one day, a picture of the chicken hanging by our mudroom and grill. “Whaddya got chickens, now?” he asked.

“Nah, they adopted us,” I replied.

“They?” he asked.

“Never mind.”

My 85-year-old mom hasn’t been able to visit Ellsworth lately due to COVID and all that, so we frequently visit on Google Meet. She’s seen pictures of the chicken hanging with the ducks by the gazebo. Now, on our Sunday night calls, she asks with pert regularity, “How’s the chicken?”

“Great,” we say, adding, “but we’re a little worried about the cold weather.”

Maybe once the snow flies, the chicken will cross the road back into the heart of Ellsworth. For now, though, Harbor Park and Marina seems as good a home as any.

If the chicken does leave, I have to admit, we’ll miss them.