The new hen arrived on a Saturday morning, in a cardboard box with air holes in the lid. She was small and speckled, with a patch of white on one wing like a splash of milk, and when Mom set her down in the run, the other hens went on scratching as though nothing had happened at all. Mom called her Clover. Clover pressed herself into the corner by the water dish and stayed there.
Ivy knelt by the wire and watched. "I wonder," she said quietly, "what makes a hen feel at home?"
Corn, she thought first. Corn makes everyone happier. So she fetched a handful from the feed bin and scattered it in Clover's corner, just for her. But the big hens came bustling over at once and pecked up every last kernel, and Clover squeezed herself smaller than before. Ivy's shoulders sagged. First try: no good.
A place to sit, she thought next. The other hens had the long perch by the door, and they lined up on it shoulder to shoulder, with no room left over. So Ivy found a straight piece of wood in the shed, sanded it smooth until there wasn't a single splinter, and wedged it up high across the corner of the coop, where a new hen could see everything. Clover looked at it once. Then she looked away and did not move. Second try: no good either.
Ivy sat down on the upturned bucket and thought hard. "I wonder," she said, "if I were new here, where would I want to be?" Not up high, she decided, with every eye on me. Somewhere low. Somewhere half-hidden. Somewhere warm.
So she tried again. She took the perch down and wedged it low instead, in the quiet corner behind the coop's warm wooden wall, where the last of the afternoon sun came through the wire in soft stripes. Her arms ached from all the wedging, but she made it good and steady, and then she stepped back to wait.
All afternoon, nothing. Clover stayed by the water dish, and Ivy pulled weeds and tried not to stare. But at dusk, when the big hens filed inside to their long perch, Clover came last of all — and she stopped beside the low perch in the quiet corner. She tipped her head at it, this way, then that. Then she hopped up, shuffled her feathers once, and settled.
Ivy stood very still, so as not to spoil it, and a slow smile spread all the way up to her ears. "So that's it," she whispered through the wire. "A place that's just your size, where the day can't jostle you."
That night, tucked under her own covers in her own quiet corner, Ivy watched the strip of moonlight on the wall and thought of Clover, settled at last on her little perch. "I wonder," she murmured, "if she'll scratch in the sun with the others tomorrow." And somewhere between the wondering and the answer, sleep came and tucked itself around her, soft as feathers.