Other Chicken Heroics

A Wisconsin couple says clucks, not fire trucks, helped them escape a blaze at their home. Dennis Murawska, 59, said a pet chicken named Cluck Cluck woke his wife Susan Cotey, 52, with loud clucking from its cage in the basement two floors below about 6:15 a.m. Thursday. The couple's two cats also were running around the main floor. Murawska said he had been half awake but didn't know about the fire because the smoke alarms hadn't gone off. He realized something was wrong when his wife got up. "The chicken gets quite vocal when she gets excited," he said. - Carrie Antlfinger, Huffington Post

In Boca Raton, Florida, Penny, a pet Orphington Buff, saved her owner, Mike Smalls. from near fashion disaster.  Mike Smalls had already left the house when Penny began clucking madly.  "I looked down," Smalls said, "and guess what?  I was wearing sandals.  With socks.  I went right back inside and changed."  Smalls' wife Lydia explains, "Penny has a pretty good eye for style.  Considering she's a chicken."  Mike Smalls adds, "It could have been pretty bad if it hadn't been for Penny.  They were white socks."

A Barred Roc in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, saved her owner thousands of dollars in potential car repairs by timely clucking.  "Every time I pulled into my driveway, Beulah started raising the roof.  She'd do the same when I started the car up," her owned Leslie Dugan says.  "I thought she was just excited to see me, but then I read on the internet how Barred Rocs are especially sensitive to engine maintenance.  I checked, and what do you know, the 'check oil' light was on. I was way past due for an oil change!  I took it to Jiffy Lube and Beulah's been quiet ever since.  I just never notice those little lights on the dashboard.  Good thing Beulah does."

"I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for her," Rick Cobb, a resident of Ipswitch, Wisconsin explains, holding a framed photograph of Lucy, his pet Rhode Island Red.  During the recent heavy snowstorm Cobb was without lights or power and unable to leave the house.  "There wasn't any food in the refrigerator," Cobb says.  "I was staring starvation plum in the eye.  Good thing I had Lucy with me."  Cobb sighs and puts down the photograph.  "Kind of sad, I guess, not like those other stories, but, hey, it's what chickens are for, right?"

Lady Bird, a Black Minorca Hen, saved her entire family from suffocation.  "It was carbon monoxide," Barry Nordic, father of three and owner of Lady Bird explains.  "The detector didn't go off because the batteries were dead.  Actually, we have problems with carbon monoxide about three, four times a week in this place, I don't know what the problem is.  We should probably move."  Sensing the family was incapacitated, Lady Bird rushed into the house and dragged Mr. and Mrs. Nordic and their three children one at a time downstairs and with her beak and through the back door to her chicken house where they recovered.  "The dog didn't make it," Nordic notes sadly, referring to Dusty, the family's pet dachshund.  "Sometimes I think Lady Bird didn't really like Dusty, but I guess we'll never know."  He gives Lady Bird a suspicious glance.  "Still, she did pretty good overall, I guess."