Chicken mystery - solved?

This past Wednesday we lost our little Easter Egg Chicken. The two hens were lounging about happily in the back yard around noon, but when Duncan went out to put them in their pen at 3:30, Azzie was missing. This was not terribly unusual, but Duncan searched everywhere he knew to look and couldn't find her. I had just left to take Hunter and Drew to some classes so we were gone until 6:30 and I think he cried the entire time. He was teary-eyed the rest of the evening, too. Poor guy!

As soon as we got home we started searching, and it didn't take long to find a couple of piles of chicken feathers on the neighbor's lawn. Oh no! I was pretty sure it was a dog who got her because I didn't think a cat would be brave enough to take on a bird bigger than itself, and with big wings to boot. Also, I figured a cat would have left a trail of feathers instead of just a pile on the lawn. Hunter maintained that since we didn't find a body there was still a chance she would just be hiding somewhere, scared, and reappear. But she didn't.

Friday morning I went to the classifieds at ksl.com and found an ad for one little Easter Egg Chicken in Lehi. The family was wanting to give her away because they keep their chickens free-range in their yard, and this one had a habit of hiding her eggs all over the place, instead of laying them in the nesting box like the other hens. A rebel! They didn't even know if she were still laying because they couldn't find any eggs, and they were tired of hunting for them.

Well, I don't care if she doesn't lay eggs. We just need a companion for this other very lonely little hen who has never before been without her friend. So I drove down this morning and brought home a "new" hen.

I'll have to get pictures later, after I take a nap (1.5 hours of sleep just doesn't cut it), but suffice it to say she is peach-colored, essentially the same age as the other hen, and seems very sweet. I creatively wanted to name her "Peach", but Duncan said he had hoped to get to name her Kalimdor. Oh. My. Gosh. Another chicken named for a fictional continent in a computer game! I may compromise if he agrees to call her "Kallie". We shall see. In the meantime, she seems to get alone fine with Rosie. They flapped their wings at each other one time and that was that. When I went to put them away, she followed Rosie right into the pen and they are now pecking around in there, happily ever after.

But wait! There is more! While I was standing in the back yard watching the chickens get to know each other, suddenly a pair of falcons swept down from the sky - right at Rosie! She was trotting across the yard at the time, and luckily went under a tree right as they swept down, so they had to fly back up into a tree, minus their prey. I was shocked! SHOCKED! Birds of prey, in our back yard! Not that that is so unusual, but I hadn't actually seen them up close before. I suspect they regularly prey on the many squirrels we have in our yard and in the field behind us (and probably on the golf course behind that, too.)

So my new-improved theory of Azzie's disappearance is that a falcon got her, and that they've been watching and waiting for the past three days for us to let the other chicken out of her pen so they could come back for seconds. Not so fast! I'd already planned to spend time this afternoon rearranging and setting up the pen and coop so the chickens can just stay in there all winter, and come and go within that protected area as they please. Now I have an even better reason to do that! (But first, a nap. Zzzzzzz)