Sweetie's Grand Adventure

So here's the more detailed story if any of you care to know it. I thought that after Sweetie's appearance in the newspaper and her being mentioned on a couple of radio shows this morning, that I should elaborate a bit.
Friday afternoon we were in the house when we heard Spooky squawking. That's what she does, so much in fact that we didn't look outside to see if something was going on. That's how she got her name, you know, because she gets upset if a leaf falls too close to her. So that was mistake number two (the first being that we had not clipped their wings since the chicks hatched- this is a learning process remember). The next mistake was not going out until after dark to close up the chicken coop. Adam locked them up and didn't think to count how many were in there (why would he?). So Saturday morning Adam went out to open the coop (We let them out everyday to wander around the yard. Keeping their wings clipped keeps them from hopping the fence but that idea rarely occurs to them anyway, being perfectly happy being close to their food, water, and shelter. At night, they put themselves to bed back in the coop with no help from us.). Only three chickens came out. When you consider the place of the chicken on the food chain you might understand how we assumed the worst from the start. We were upset, but for the most part, we took it like farmers. We said it was a shame since she was the pretty one, the sweet one, and then we went on with our day (I have spent the last couple days trying to explain to my city-centric friends, who assume our relationship with our chickens is like our relationship to our cats, why we're not devastated and trying to explain to my more rural friends why a missing chicken would make a good human interest story).
Sunday morning I got a message on Facebook that Sweetie was seen the morning before by our neighbors a block away. We quickly got dressed and drove around the neighborhood hoping to spot her. We came home and I posted a message on our neighborhood list serve. A couple hours later our neighbors called and said they could hear her squawking but couldn't see her. Again, we drove around and walked around with no luck. Another neighbor called later that day to tell me that another neighbor reported a couple of hens in her backyard on Saturday, one matching the description of Sweetie. So apparently she had made friends. Maybe there's a roving gang of chickens and Sweetie has just fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Yesterday, Dioni Wise from the Greensboro New and Record called Adam after seeing our message on the list serve. That is how Sweetie got into the paper. And apparently into at least two radio show's morning conversations.
So here we are rolling our eyes, muttering "chickens" under our breath, which has sort of become a joke around here. We're hoping she's alive and well and that somebody will see her and call us! And for my part, I'm hoping that this is Sweetie's 15 minutes of fame and not mine. I'd hate my legacy to be that I lost a chicken!