Chicken hitches ride, ends up in Vermont’s largest city

HINESBURG, Vt. (AP) — A Vermont family’s chicken is back home after hitching a ride in the undercarriage of their pickup truck and ending up 13 miles away in the state’s largest city late last month — a journey that included speeds of 65 miles per hour on an interstate.

Someone having coffee on Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace, an outdoor pedestrian mall, spotted the chicken and knew the bird was in a predicament, WCAX-TV reported.

“That’s a chicken! That’s a chicken on Church Street and I don’t know why it’s here,” Lo Fasano told the news station. “What can I do now aside from find who it belongs to?”

Fasano called rehabilitators, Shelburne Farms and the police.

“They said they don’t do chickens,” Fasano said.

So Fasano took the chicken home, gave her food and a place to nest, and turned to social media. A Facebook post led to finding the chicken’s owners in Hinesburg who were worried about the lost hen.

The chicken is now home. Because of her adventurous spirit, the family changed her name from Bug to Amelia after Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

“I think about her and I’m really happy it had a happy ending,” Fasano said.