Hen Chronicles: If you're hungry enough, anything is possible

We only have three hens, which is almost as much as we can handle because our small coop is only big enough for four chickens. In keeping with the overall size of the coop, the door is less than 11 inches wide.

Snow, Nellie and Hope are full-grown hens. They eat well. They eat frequently. They eat a lot. I wouldn't say they're plump, but they're certainly not scrawny. I've never actually measured any of them, but it's safe to say each one is at least six or seven inches wide.

Normally, the hens troop out of the coop single file, because that's what the door can accommodate. But when I opened the door this morning to release "the girls" into the pen, where their breakfast awaited them, Snow and Nellie literally raced through the door simultaneously, side by side. No exaggeration. If you do the math, that's 12 to 14 inches of melded chickens squeezing through less than 11 inches of space at precisely the same moment.

Impossible? Hunger is a powerful motivator. And having plenty of compressible feathers helps.