Shadow Have I Loved

From the first day when we brought home the baby chicks back in March, Scottie loved the black one. She was the solitary black sex-link chicken so I named her Shadow and she became Scott’s chicken. Hyrum and I claimed Sheila, and Skunky, the two Americana chickens. Shadow quickly became the best chicken of the lot. When we would bring out table scraps she had a knack for getting most of them. She could even jump really high and get them out of our fingers. She was our favorite chicken. She laid eggs first out of all the chickens but one day one of them broke and we saw her pecking at it and soon her eggs would disappear. We would find DARK brown shells in the layer box. So we took her out of the pen for a week to separate her from the others, and then when I left for Ireland with the boys, Hyrum performed the dirty deed. But yesterday she may have received clemency, though two months to late. Hyrum found a stash of six DARK brown eggs under a bush outside of the pen. Could she be innocent? Could one of the mangy Buffy’s eaten her eggs? We are having trouble with a Buffy now. Guess what, when I cracked opened the eggs one by one, they smelled bad and were getting a little cloudy. Do you think this will go on our record at the judgment? None of us enjoyed our chicken dinner much. Scottie still talks about her and says she is with Heavenly Father. I think she is too.