Get down from there! Cutie Patootie gets into the kitchen, flies to the top of the cabinets.

Cutie Patootie is alive and well. She has been spayed.

Spayed?

Yes, my lovely little boisterous hen has been relieved of the agony of laying eggs. Because for Cutie is was literally agony. A few weeks ago -- just before Seder (I remember because I hard boiled a dozen eggs) -- I posted that Cutie Patootie had recovered after being "egg-bound," a situation where a hen gets an egg stuck in her body. In the weeks that followed, the condition became chronic. She would lay two or three semi-normal eggs (we didn't eat them), and then she'd have trouble, which would require medical intervention -- pain killers, hormone injections, calcium shoved down her throat. One of the eggs she layed was as big as a regulation-sized baseball and was actually an egg within an egg.

All the while, my well-meaning friends were making jokes about stew pots. Even I thought the jokes were funny. Except that Cutie Patootie is a pet. She is affectionate with my daughter and I, and wary of people she knows less well. The relationships are mutual. When she's feeling okay, she is lively and extremely curious about...everything. She likes human company, likes to be held, likes to explore, gets into mischief. When she's not in the coop, she follows us around. If it weren't for the way she flies onto my shoulder I'd say she was like a dog. Does anyone suggest the stew pot when their friends' dogs are sick? Of course not.