Chapter 1

Today I found this book in the yard, it is just what I need. I've been longing for someone to confide in and this will be my diary. You will be a closer friend to me than anyone else, dear Diary, even Goosey Loosey! It is to you that I can confess my secrets and my dreams. And I will call you DD. That will be my most affectionate name for you. Oh, DD, Welcome to my life.

Here's what I do all day: Hop, hop, hop. Eat, eat, eat. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Hop, hop, hop. I watch my mother, Big Red Hen, and the rest of the flock and their days are pretty much the same as mine. They also lay, lay, lay and brood, brood, brood as I will someday too. I feel as if there must be something more than this, but I can't think of what. I asked Big Red Hen but she just said, "What more could there be?"

This afternoon I was startled when Providencia, the Rhode Island Red, rushed silently by me flapping her wings. Her head was gone and she ran around and around for the longest time before she stopped. The strangest part of it is, that after a passing glance, nearly everyone just pretended as if nothing had happened! Big Red Hen didn't want to talk about it. No one wanted to talk about it. Turkey Lurkey just muttered, "She was old, that's all." And Banty strutted around and shooed everyone away. I don't get it. Does this mean that when a chicken gets old her head falls off? What happens then?

Later Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky and I went for a walk down to the pond and they went for a swim but I had to stand at water's edge and watch. I asked Turkey Lurkey, "Why can't chickens swim?" "Just can't," he said. The others flew back across the pond. Why can't chickens fly? I mean really fly instead of just hop and flutter? I didn't bother to ask that time, though. I have so many questions and no one has the answers.

The Saga Begins