This week’s installment also appears in the Boston Globe, where I explained the fate of Lou (aka Woo) and the fine line between chickens to be loved and chickens to be eaten. (Is it fair to blame a cat for being a cat?)

‘NO ONE’S going to eat my chickens.” That’s been my mantra ever since we took a spontaneous trip to the feed store and came home with four baby chicks. And yes, I knew how hypocritical that sounded. We had organic chicken thighs and roasting chickens in the freezer.

But these adorable balls of fluff, grand prize winners in the lottery of poultry life, were going to be pets. They got a home in our bathroom, under a heat lamp, while they grew. They got names: BeBe, Dee Dee, Lanie, and Lou. Our kids would learn about responsibility and animal development.

They’d also learn, sooner than we realized, about the brutality of nature. Three weeks into our chicken odyssey, my 5-year-old son would rush to my husband and announce, in his pre-K diction, “A cat got Woo.”

Read the rest of the column here.