'I was so surprised': Owner catches chicken sneaking into her bedroom to lay eggs
Kate McCormick didn't know how an egg ended up on her bed until she found her chicken in her bedroom
It's unsettling to find something inexplicably amiss in your house. But when it's an egg — delicately left on your bed — it's downright bizarre.
But that was the scene Kate McCormick found when she returned to her Waldo, Maine home one day last month. There was the egg, sitting on her bed, and she had no idea how it got there.
"I did not know what to think," Kate McCormick told As It Happens host Carol Off. "I was so surprised."
Dumbfounded, McCormick initially thought her dog, Jake, was somehow responsible.
"I thought, Jake, you have never picked up an egg in your life. Did you pick up an egg today and bring it upstairs?" McCormick recalled. "My next thought was, gosh, could somebody be playing a joke on me?"
At this point, McCormick still didn't suspect it was a direct delivery — which is a bit strange, since McCormick has kept chickens for years in a backyard coop. She currently has 19 hens.
That said, she insists the birds never lay eggs in her house — let alone her bed.
But after calling her friends to make sure it wasn't some weird prank, McCormick started to investigate. The poop trail was the first damning piece of evidence.
"There were some piles of chicken poop on my floor," she said. "I realized, in fact, a chicken had come into the house that day, all on her own, and had not only laid an egg in my bed but had visited multiple rooms in my house."
All signs pointed to the chickens. But which one? And how could she be sure?
"I was thinking that night — could I set up a camera in my house? How am I going to catch this chicken in the act?"
Egg-laying culprit 'very innocent looking'
The day after "the original egg-laying incident," McCormick was having coffee in her living room when she heard chicken noises coming from her magnetic screen doggie door.
"Sure enough, she had come back in the door and had made her way right up the steps," McCormick said.
"I snuck behind her to my bedroom, and she caught me watching her. And she acted like she was doing nothing out of the ordinary up there, very innocent looking."
McCormick didn't want to blow her cover so she listened from outside her bedroom door.
"She kind of clucks and squawks and carries on for a bit," she said. "And the next thing I know, I hear her jump off the bed, and I went and looked and again — there was an egg in my bed."
Case closed. McCormick doesn't name her chickens, but says it's no surprise this particular bird was the culprit.
"She has always been the most people-friendly chicken. ... She seems to really enjoy company and I think that she has found herself a nice cozy spot to lay an egg where she's not bothered by any of the other 19 chickens."
McCormick is a midwife and wonders whether that might have something to do with the bird's unusual behaviour.
"She knows that I am in the delivery business," McCormick said.
Then again, it also sounds like the chicken might have just worked out an arrangement with Jake and be in cahoots with the dog.
"She definitely has a special bond with me and my dog and it's only growing more since that incident because she's now insisting that she is inside while we're here," McCormick said.
"Jake loves it. They actually share a food bowl at times. Jake is a dog that never really finishes his bowl of food."
Written by John McGill. Produced by Morgan Passi.