Gimpy-one-leg

Nature's pretty amazing. Gimpy was one of six peeps I ordered online from a place called My Pet Chicken. She was broken--her leg mangled--don't know how, but My Pet Chicken managed to screw up half my order and poor Gimpy was one of the screw-ups.

Gimpy shouldn't have lived. She was hurt, she was tiny, she was on the bottom rung of the pecking order. Everybody in my little flock stepped on Gimpy--or pecked at her bad leg--that stuck out at a not at all natural angle. When she wasn't being picked on she was left behind. In the chicken world that's worse. Birds that get left behind die. Rough start for a little puff of feathers that didn't register on a postage meter. 

Then Ma Nature stepped in and durned if Gimpy didn't beat the odds. The bad leg fell off--or was pulled off by one of the other chickens--and as soon as that dead weight wasn't there any more, Gimpy began to thrive. Three months later the Gimp flutters after the other girls, wings flapping, gimp leg skimming the ground--a ball of determined chickenhood. She can't scratch, but she can poke for goodies with her hawk beak. She has to work three times as hard to get half as far. She's tiny and still peeps. Who knows if she'll ever cluck like a proper chicken--or lay an egg. I'm guessing yes. I trust Gimpy to beat the odds again.