Chicken Corner has heard from the South Los Angeles Animal Shelter that Penny, the little red hen, has a new home -- at the Gentle Barn, in Santa Clarita. It's an animal sanctuary and education center -- not to mention employer. Penny's new job will be to live well and to help secure the relationship of at-risk children with their best humane selves. She'll be doing yoga, clucking, pecking, and trying to find out what's going on everywhere, nosy, nosy, nosy. She will share her home with horses, cats, dogs, pigs, and cows. Penny lived in a cage at South L.A. shelter from December 7 until last week.

If you were hoping Penny would be yours, Tomika Johnson at South Los Angeles Animal Shelter emailed me that the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter has hens who need homes.

Speaking of sanctuary for chickens, a reader from Mount Washington, Lynda Akin, sent me a story about Derwin, a rooster rescued by Herve Chapman, the owner of Highland Park's Verdugo Pets, who has temporarily closed shop while he is being treated for leukemia.

Lynda wrote that a Mt. Washington friend of hers (who was also her landlord) has daughters, now in their late 20s, who used to ride horses:

One of the girls brought home [from the stable] a baby chick that had been handled and that the mother then rejected. It grew into a very fine, very noisy, aggressive rooster. When the time came for him to stop annoying the neighbors (after many, many complaints) it was the nice man at Verdugo Pets (where they bought their feed) who took him in, promising he would keep him or find him a home. Derwin stayed with him for years it seems...and I have to think the man took in others as well.

By definition, a sanctuary is a sanctuary. But some cost more to keep going.