Plucky: From Trauma to Tranquility
We first saw her on February 25, 2026: pink, naked, near impossible to initially determine what we were looking at. A Facebook post with two pictures of her flailing body running through Wahiawā District Park immediately snatched our hearts. What kind of bird are we even seeing here? Less than 30 minutes after reading about the severely abused chicken limping through the park, we were in the car heading straight for central Oʻahu. At this point in our rescue journey, we’d never caught a bird who wasn’t close enough to wander into a cage or wasn’t incapacitated enough to simply pick up, so this task was daunting.
We quickly spotted her at the park when we arrived. She was fearful and restless of course, but she came to us when we offered her food. After feeding her and waiting patiently for a while, we netted her and brought her back to our vehicle. When we finally had her in our arms, we saw everything she endured: her body was hot pink and red covered in blood, sunburns, and scabs with only feathers on parts of her wings and legs. She had a large gash on her right side that was oozing puss and blood and her foot appeared injured as she was limping profusely. We immediately dropped her off at Feather & Fur Animal Hospital for a full evaluation due to the severity of her injuries. When we picked her up later that night, we were told she showed signs of being manually plucked of all her feathers, her leg and foot were fractured, and she was sliced on the side of her body. We named her Plucky to empower her from her torture and we held her body in a comfy towel all the way home.
Plucky was incredibly skittish and quiet as we’d anticipate any feral animal who suffered through such immense trauma would be. Her wonderful vet Dr. Pluskat prescribed her antibiotics and pain medications we had to administer multiple times each day while we also cleaned her open wound at night. She was to be kept in a large kennel with lots of water, food, and grit to allow for as much rest and recovery as possible. As she recovered and grew stronger, we learned more about Plucky’s personality, her interests, and her food preferences.
Like all chickens, Plucky has a unique personality. She is incredibly rambunctious, sassy, and bold! When she’s hungry or bored or tired of being in her kennel, she’ll let us know by making an almost dinosaur-like horn noise until we accomplish her goal. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in work meetings or we’re feeding her fellow chicken, dog, or cat siblings, Plucky wants what she wants right now! She initially was afraid of leaving her kennel, but now she loves it. She enjoys walking around the room, pecking at and kicking the different bags of food to show her like or dislike of each, and she’ll wait until she’s just left the kennel to go to the bathroom right in the middle of our human floor (even if she hasn’t done so on the newspaper in her kennel!). Sometimes when we’ve just finished replacing the puppy pad or newspaper in her metal house, Plucky will use the bathroom on her fresh padding. And when we tell her to come outside so we can re-replace the paper and not to step on her waste, she’ll look directly at us, lift one foot in the air, and step right on it! She also loves tipping over her food and grit bowls right after we fill them.
Plucky adores eating, just like her mom. Any time her crop is mildly empty, she’ll warn us it’s time for her to eat again! She loves all daily meals from crumble to scratch to mealworms to oyster shell, but she’s even more excited about the treats she receives throughout the day. Some of her favorite special foods are scrambled eggs (from Sam’s Club or her own), corn, rice, spring mix (the green pieces only), green grapes, watermelon, and raspberries. As soon as we come into her room and she knows we have a treat in our hands, she’ll jump through the air and try to grab it! We love feeding her different treats and spoiling her with attention, kisses, and play time since she’s such a brave survivor.
We recently made a play box filled with newspaper shreds and hemp for Plucky’s kennel, and she loves rustling around in it so much! We wanted to imitate the feeling of dust bathing, and while the textures are different, she seems to behave similarly in the box as outdoor chickens do in the dirt and dust. Fluffing her wings, waddling her body, and rolling around in the newspaper and hemp, Plucky loves both playing and sleeping in her new box. Since she’s become healthier, she’s also fully grown her comb and has become a prolific egg layer! She’s laid 2-3 eggs per week for the past 4 months, which feed both the humans and chickens in our household.
Since we traveled to Wahiawā to grab Plucky back in February, we’ve become obsessive chicken rescuers. Nearly all of our non-work time is spent scouring through requests for help capturing chickens and/or chicks who’ve been tortured, abused, abandoned, orphaned, and/or are on the verge of death due to the barbarism of both adults and children; driving throughout Oʻahu looking for said chickens/chicks; strategizing whether to net, box, or grab them; determine their health status; find a temporary or indefinite foster; etc. We’ve rescued over 80 birds since Plucky, and, inspired by our forever hen, we have no intention of stopping. Another Plucky is always out there waiting for her turn to find peace. And when we hear about her, we’ll be there, ready to take her home.
