Chicken on the lam causes 'chaos' at Yarmouth parking lot

People trust him with their nest eggs — and now an investment and retirement planner with the Royal Bank of Canada has proven he's pretty good with chickens too, after catching a hen on the loose in a parking lot on Yarmouth.

Daniel Reid was working on Friday afternoon when a client came running in and said there was a chicken in the parking lot.

"We kind of didn't believe it but we went out and yeah, there was a chicken running around," he told CBC's Mainstreet on Monday.

"Everybody was stopping to look at it, cars were having to stop. There was a lot of traffic both in and out, frequently, and that was kind of causing chaos."

Reid and others leaped into action using a tarp provided by a passerby. The chicken proved difficult to capture, as it darted underneath cars and between various vehicles in the bank's parking lot.

The incident was caught on video by Yarmouth Vanguard reporter Carla Allen.

Reid said the chicken run finally came to a stop in the wheel well of a small car.

"I got my hand around her leg so I threw the tarp down, reached under, grabbed her leg and our manager had a mop so he was trying to push the chicken out from under the wheel well," he said.

"The chicken finally got both feet on the ground, I got both its legs, pulled it out and a guy that was there happened to have some chicken experience so he said, 'Grab it from right behind its neck' and it was calm then."

Reid said the chicken couldn't stay at the bank all weekend so he called his sister-in-law, who has a small farm with chickens. She agreed to take the bird.

The hen was OK but "kind of traumatized," said Reid.

After the Vanguard posted their story online, Reid said the owners of the chicken contacted him.

"Half an hour after we caught it, the actual owners of the chicken called the branch to see if we still had it and apparently, this chicken will jump up underneath the undercarriage of vehicles," he said.

"They probably live about 20 minutes away so it rode in on the car. They had no idea it was there. They knew that they went to the Royal Bank, they knew they had chickens, and they put two and two together."

Reid said he's now proud he has "chicken experience" and he learned one valuable lesson.

"How fast a chicken can run," he said, laughing.