My Friend Thelma Is A Hen.

My friend Thelma is a hen.

Thelma's one of the egg-layers here at the homestead.

She's the last of the oldest group of hens. 

The others are all younger hens.

Thelma has lighter colored feathers than the youngsters who stay in the henhouse out back. She has seen all her first coop-mates pass to the great henhouse in the sky. Her sister and companion was Louise who died of old age at the end of the cold season this year. Louise got hospice care in my living room. We gently communed while she quietly passed away in a comfy little box.

They were "Thelma and Louise" but now it is just Thelma.

Thelma has been granted permission to stay overnight, every night on the steps leading up to my second floor apartment. She ascends to the fourth or fifth step toward sunset each day and hunkers down for the night. I pet her on my way by up or down the stairs.  Sometimes I sit a step or two below and pet her for a few minutes.

Each morning she makes her way down the steps and heads out into the yard to chow down on some bugs and some grass seeds and some plants. 

Sometimes my next door neighbors... who technically own Thelma....

... toss out some corn cobs or other treats for Thelma and the five other hens who prowl the yard.

Thelma... after taking a breakfast jaunt....

... almost every day

... comes back into my stairwell...

 ...climbs all the way up to the second floor landing,

 ...hunkers on down and lays an egg on my doormat

   ... right in front of my door.

It is not the easiest thing in the world for a hen to climb stairs yet Thelma goes out of her way to lay her egg before my door.

Ya know.... it is things like this that make me cry, the good kind of crying....

A simple little hen
climbs up some extra steps and gives me an egg almost every day.
Maybe its because she is my friend.

Yup. Thelma, the hen, is my friend.