How to unexpectedly acquire a chicken in 6 easy steps:
1) Go to a remote forest reserve in the hills where you've never seen a chicken before. Find a chicken waiting for you there.
2) Offer the chicken food. (I had an old, unopened muesli bar in my backpack that did the trick.)
3) Feed the chicken some of the food by the car.
4) Slowly open the car door, and put some of the food inside the car. Provide a step up into the car for the chicken. (If the chicken is suspicious of the backpack you first use as a step, swap that out for something the chicken recognises, like a nearby brick.)
5) Wait patiently for the chicken to hop up into the car.
6) Close the car door. Drive home with the chicken.
馃槃
A photo of the chicken now standing just inside our car, with the car door still open.
A photo of the chicken standing on an old brick we put by the car, at our open car door.
My wife putting some of my crumbed up muesli bar in our car while the (hungry) chicken watches attentively from a safe distance.
A photo of a brown hen, which we found at the entrance to Jollie's Bush in the Christchurch Port Hills, along the Summit Road 310 metres elevation above the coastal suburb of Sumner.