The hubs and I are lovers of animals, and we have neighbors all around us that have pets — dogs, cats, frogs, fish, a salamander, crabs and yes, chickens.

And from time to time, one of them will ask us to take care of pets while they are on vacation.

Never a problem, given that we already take care of our own, our son’s, and several outdoor cats and a neighbor’s dogs.

Our neighbors who have the chickens went out of the country for Thanksgiving, and they asked another neighbor to take care of their menagerie. Short story, the caretaker ended up in the hospital (she is on the mend, no worries!) and asked us to step in and help.

How much do you know about chickens? I confess I knew very little. I’d seen videos of people with chickens and heard stories about how they can be affectionate, but that they have definite personalities.

I hate going into anything without having at least some information about what I’m doing, so I dove into Google to see what I could learn.

Did you know that they need to eat small stones to help them digest food? The stones go into the gizzard, something we humans don’t have, and they help grind up the food. Apparently oyster shells are OK for them to eat, but are not hard enough to do the gizzard work.

Now, how many of you have seen gizzards on the menu? I don’t eat meat anymore, and would never have ordered them, but this new bit of information makes me wonder about those of you that do eat these. I confess, I’m not sure I will ever get the appeal of eating a part of an animal that is purely for digestive purposes and which needs small stones to be effective.

But I digress.

Chickens, like all of us, need certain nutrients to be healthy, and what they need changes by season. Which also makes sense. But for chickens, things like corn and greens and human table scraps are considered treats, because there is not enough nutritional value in them to sustain them longterm. Once again, I’m looking around and wondering about the advice for humans that says our vegetables and dark, leafy greens are important. Are we getting something wrong, here?

OK, I know, they are chickens and we are humans, but I’m going to have to delve deeper at some point

At any rate, the owners said they had left enough actual feed that should last the week, but I did bring them over two bowls of chopped spinach and some shredded carrots which they devoured. (Hey, there were four of them, they needed two bowls.)

The four of them have a high fenced yard to scratch about in during the day, with a lovely tree for shade, and at night, they go into a secure, enclosed pen.

Each night, we put them away at dark, because we have had a report or two of more serious predators in our neighborhood once in a while, and I know we have a few stray dogs that wander the streets. The chickens have a habit of flying up over their fence and visiting neighbors or rooting around under the shrubs outside their fence, and the last thing I wanted was to have to explain what happened to a chicken to the owners.

Most days, they would be on the top of their fence, sometimes with heads already tucked under wings. One of us would have to reach up and lift them down, and it always involved some flapping of wings and release of a few pin feathers, but once they were in our arms, they’d settle down, allow for some pets and chin rubs before going into their pen, where they promptly hopped up on their bars for the night.

Their feathers are so very soft, and once they felt safe in my arms, I understood their charms. They made soft cooing sounds when you’d pet them, and they did indeed have personalities. The black one was bravest, the first willing to trust me. The two with rust-colored spots were more shy, never quite willing to get too close on their own. And the white one. Oh, the white one. She is sassy. Always squawks about getting picked up for bedtime, always the hardest to reach, and once in a while, one that I had to coax down from the garage roof.

The last night of the vacation came, and the hubs went to put the chickens up.

He came back with dreadful news. There were only three. He’d searched everywhere.

I grabbed a flashlight and went back out with him and we searched again. We looked in their boat, on the roof, in the trees, under all the shrubs, got the neighbors out and looked in all of our yards, in our garage, under cars,  everywhere that we could think a chicken might possibly go.

In the end, we had to let the owners know, one chicken was now missing.

I didn’t sleep, kept getting up and looking over the fence to see if she’d showed up.

Nothing.

And then, the next morning, we opened the pen and there she was.

I know she was not in that pen the night before. I do not know if the neighbors found her and put her away, or if Santa Claus saw my utter dismay and brought me an early gift.

All I know is chickens are apparently mighty good at hiding, and are, just maybe, a little magical.

Elisabeth Strillacci covers crime, courts, Spencer, East Spencer and Kannapolis for the Salisbury Post.