Many years ago, twenty-one to be exact, Sam got a baby bunny. Being Sam, he named him after Ethan Allen, a Vermont hero. Sam loved Ethan Allen with all of his heart, and for a little boy, he took pretty good care of him.

Then one day, Ethan Allen escaped from his outdoor hutch. Sam cried and cried, and several hours later, Ethan Allen showed up on the lawn, and we were able to drop a laundry basket over him, catch him, and put in back in the reinforced hutch.

Then he escaped again. And was caught again.

And again, and again and again. Each time, it took longer to catch him.

Finally, we all decided that just like his namesake, bunny Ethan Allen was fighting for freedom, and he deserved to be free, and we let him live as a free-range bunny.

Over the years, our local population of bunnies clearly had some genetic input from Ethan Allen. Our wild bunnies have strange coloring and look more like him than their fully wild cousins. When we see one, we still laugh about it.

Then we got the laying hen, Fluffy 2. Beautiful and somewhat aloof from her chicken peers, Fluffy 2 loved to be carried and held. Then one day she wouldn’t go back to the coop at night. After a few days without a sighting, we assumed she’d been eaten. Then she appeared, then disappeared, again and again.

As of this morning, it had been almost three weeks since our last sighting. We had talked about how we thought she finally was gone for good. That was, right up until we started pulling up the driveway and she was standing by the blueberry bushes looking at us. We laughed, saying it was Ethan Allen all over again…

Any day now, we expect to see little Fluffies running around because clearly, she has a secret life going on now.

Good for her!