Maryanne

Sarah lived on a small farm in Ohio in 1959. She was nine years old, had

brown hair and green eyes. Her mother raised chickens to eat and would sell the

eggs. One day Sarah's mother gave Sarah her very own chicken to raise. Sarah

named the chicken Maryanne.

Sarah couldn't wait for Maryanne to start laying eggs because Sarah

wanted to sell the eggs and buy a necklace that she had been wanting for just

about a year now.

She found some wood, some chicken wire, a hammer, and nails laying

around the farm and she built Maryanne a small chicken coup. Maryanne could eat

in her mother's chicken pen but Sarah wanted her to lay her eggs in the coup

that she had built. Sarah would let Maryanne out in her mother's chicken pen

during the day and lock her in the coup at night. Maryanne wouldn't be too

lonely because Sarah had built her coup right next to her mother's chicken coup.

There was a garden on the farm that Sarah's family used for canning

their own food and Sarah's job was to pick the bugs off of the beans, tomatoes,

and cabbage. She would take the bugs and put them into an old Mason jar. When

the jar was full of bugs, she took them to Maryanne's coup and fed the bugs to

her as a special treat. She also fed Maryanne laying mash which was supposed to

help her lay eggs and keep her healthy.

One morning Sarah went to her mothers chicken coup to feed and water the

chickens and she saw some hens sitting on their nests and they wouldn't get up

to eat or drink. She went into the house and told her mother that some of her

hens were sick because they wouldn't get off the nests. Her mother just smiled

and went with Sarah to tend to the sick hens.

When they got to the chicken coup, Sarah's mother told her that the hens

weren't sick. She told Sarah that the hens were laying eggs now and that they

wouldn't leave the nests very much until the eggs had hatched. Sarah went back

to the house and got a basket to put her mothers eggs in. After they had pushed

the hens over and removed their eggs, Sarah looked in Maryanne's coup and she

wasn't there. She looked all over the place but Maryanne wasn't anywhere.

Sarah's mother told her that maybe her chicken was eaten by a Fox during

the night. Sarah looked all around the chicken pen area for Fox tracks but