Lonely Helen and One eyed Fred

Though I am a city girl, I do enjoy that our neighbor has farm animals.  He is a great guy.  He takes care of Hamburger and Helper for us along with his cows plus he has pigs and some chickens.  He has guinea hens, a broody hen and a rooster.  The hen’s name is Lonely Helen and the Rooster’s name is One Eyed Fred.  Who says you can’t have names for your animals…..  Anyway, Lonely Helen wasn’t laying any eggs so Darvin told her, either she starts laying or she’s gonna be the chicken for chicken and dumplings.  A few days later, surprise, there were eggs.  Then a few weeks after that, lonely Helen must not have been so lonely because she laid about 7 fertilized eggs.  I guess One Eyed Fred finally saw Helen with his good eye.  As I understand it the whole mating process takes about 30 seconds, so how excited can you get???   Anyway, back to Helen.  She has been brooding those eggs and won’t let Darvin near her- probably not much nicer to Fred!  We were all excited that we were going to have chicks.  Okay, I like living vicariously through my neighbor, all the fun of farming without really getting dirty.  Thursday night Darvin stopped by the cabin after work to see our progress.  Sitting on the porch we asked about Helen and the soon to be chicks.  It seems a fox got into the hen house and killed Helen and broke open all the eggs.  Poor Helen, we are going to miss her.