With a title like that, how could I resist?
Ethel the chicken is a proud mama. There’s something special about this one particular egg—she’s already named the chick Dylan, even though he’s not hatched yet. She hides the egg in a safe place so nothing will happen to him. Already she’s dreaming of who he’ll be.
But he’s taking forever to hatch. Stiff and sore, Ethel gets up to stretch, and Cawly the crow swoops down and swipes the egg, right off the nest. Ethel tries to fly after him, but only manages to get ten feet off the ground. Cawly hears the commotion of Ethel screaming after him, thinks she’s hot on his tail, and drops the egg into another nest high up in a tree. He doesn’t want to get caught with it.
Meanwhile, the owner of the nest returns. She’s an eagle, and she’s very confused at seeing this small chicken egg in her nest. It’s much smaller than her own eggs, and while she knows it’s a mistake, she thinks that maybe she laid that egg without realizing it. Dylan hatches, and the eagle decides to feed him senseless so he’ll grow as big as an eagle chick.
She brings back a dead rat. Dylan turns up his nose – how disgusting! Meanwhile, down on the ground, Ethel has located him. She asks a sparrow to fly him up some corn. That goes down much more easily.
As time goes by, Dylan notices more and more differences between himself and his eagle brothers. They’re bigger, they’re flying, and he just doesn’t fit in. Ethel is down on the ground, telling him that she’s really his mother and he should spread his wings and sail on down where he belongs. Poor little chicken is feeling conflicted.
But when a sly fox sees Ethel out under the tree, away from the protection of the henhouse, Dylan leaps into action. He dive bombs the fox and helps his mother to safety, all the while screaming like an eagle. Sometimes it’s a good idea to pay homage to all sides of your heritage.
Dylan realizes that he’s a chicken, and Mother Eagle gives him permission to stay in the barnyard. He was able to have the best of both worlds, and all that fox got was a mouth full of feathers. I guess we could say, he was a little down in the mouth?
(This book was published in 2002 by Boyd Mills Press and was illustrated by Karen Stormer Brooks.)
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