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Semolina, who didn’t like rain from clouds or sprinklers. “Chicken with her head in the air misses the worms.”
    Josh smiled. “When my baby sister is born, I’m going to bring her out here and show her the very first rainbow of her life.”
    “Might be a rooster.”
    “A boy? Nope. Mom says it’s a girl, and I guess she knows. You hatch out many chickens, Semolina?”
    She stretched one leg, then the other. “Ain’t it time to go back?”
    Josh would not be put off. “Family, Semolina. Did you ever have any little chickies?”
    “Sure, buddy.” She shook her feathers in a sassy way. “I adopted you, didn’t I?”
    “Me?” He laughed. “Wait a minute. You don’t have me. I have you. You’re supposed to be my pet.”
    “Who says, buddy?”
    “I do.”
    “I say different.” She pecked his shoe tie, pulled it undone and let it drop. “You going to stand here crowing all day? Or you wanna see the fox hole?”
    The hens in number three were still roosting and half asleep when Josh opened the barn. As he and Semolina walked in, there was a stirring of feathers that sounded like a wind, then a shifting of feet and a movement of hundreds of red combs as heads turned, eyes snapping alert. Semolina led Josh the full length of the barn and came to a standstill by the end wall.The rustling behind them stopped. There was such a stillness that Josh imagined every hen to be holding its breath.

    He looked up and down the black boards. He and Tucker had gone over every inch of these walls, and he knew them as well as he knew his own bedroom. “No hole here,” he said.
    For answer, Semolina scratched away some of the ground straw, then pushed her beak against the side of a tarred slat. The length of lumber swung aside, revealing a triangle of darkness about ten inches wide at the bottom and peaking some fifteen inches up.
    Josh sucked in breath and let it out in a low whistle. “Sothat’s the hole!” He put his hand through and touched something familiar, a piece of eggshell. “The board’s got only one nail in it. It swings. Wow! The chickens push it aside and deliberately lay their eggs out there—for the fox.” He dropped right down on his stomach to see through the hole. It was like a little cave out there, dark and airless. “This must be behind the straw pile!” he said. “Spittin’ bugs! No wonder we didn’t see anything from the outside.”
    He got up on his hands and knees and looked around the shed. The chickens were so still they could have all been solid blocks of ice. “They’re scared, aren’t they?” he said to Semolina. “Scared what the fox will do.”
    She didn’t answer. Nor would she in front of all her kin. Silently, she led him out of the barn. As soon as he closed the door behind them, the chickens started the biggest racket he’d ever heard. Not egg songs. Not cries for food. It was a yackety-yack noise that reminded him of a bus full of kids on the first day of school.
    Semolina walked fast, her claws scrabbling in the dust. He followed her along the length of laying boxes to the back of the barn, where the straw was piled high. Sure enough,there was a tunnel behind the straw, widening against the wall to nest size. Here the dried grass was smooth, packed down and showing bits of old shell where the fox had eaten his fill of eggs before carrying more away to his lair.
    “You betcha they’re scared,” said Semolina. “Chickens got reason to be scared of most things—hawks, foxes, biggies.” She turned her head. “Most of all biggies.”
    Josh was too excited to argue with her. He picked her up in both hands and kissed her right on top of her wicked old head. She blinked, pulled away, and he put her down again. “My dad is going to be a happy man,” he said.
    “Yeah?”
    “Very happy.”
    “Happy like in giving the chicken a big reward?”
    “Reward?” Josh laughed. “That’s another new word! Semolina, where do you learn all this stuff?”
    She stretched