Nurse resuscitates drowned chicken.

From the Siftings (Arkansas) Herald News comes a story I offer to you without comment.

Boo Boo had a "fowl" experience last week. She drowned, but thanks to "mouth-to-beak" resuscitation by a family member who is a retired nurse, she survived.

Boo Boo is an exotic - well, chicken - that belongs to Jackie and Becky Calhoun. She is part of the menagerie the Calhouns have at their house just west of Arkadelphia.

Jackie Calhoun said that on the day, Jan. 31, of the near tragedy, "I came home for lunch about 12:30 p.m. I heard some commotion in the chicken yard. I found Boo Boo face down, floating in the pond." The pond is a small, shallow, round one right behind the house.

"I picked her up and started giving her the Heimlich maneuver. I pushed on her belly and patted her on the back," he said. As a preacher, he also thought to say a few words over her. "I said, 'In the name of Jesus, you will live. You will not die.'"

The bird was one limp, wet hen, but "she started twitching," Becky said.
"I thought surely there was something else I could do," Jackie said. He considered trying to use the vacuum cleaner. When his listeners cackled at that suggestion, he explained that he thought he might use the vacuum to "suck the water out of the chicken."

He abandoned that idea, and "we spoke some more words over that chicken." He wrapped her in a towel, and put her in Becky's lap. "Its eyes were open, and it was holding its head up," he said.

Becky wasn't so optimistic. "We were trying to revive a dead chicken," she said.

Jackie had to go back to work, but a few minutes later his sister, Marian Morris, came by, and Becky told her about the chicken. "I took Sis (as Morris is known in the family) out there. It seemed like it was dead."
The chicken is called Boo Boo, because she is easily frightened. They thought "somebody might have pecked it" and it became frightened and fell in the pond.

Morris has been trained in CPR, but she's been retired for years and hasn't had any recent practice in the procedure. "I said, 'I think I'll try CPR.' I wanted to know if I still had it."

She began mouth-to-beak resuscitation, "I breathed into its beak, and its dad-gum eyes popped open. I breathed into its beak again, and its eyes popped open again. "I said, 'I think this chicken's alive now. Keep it warm.'" She admitted that she didn't know how to find a pulse on a chicken.

Jackie said as he went back to work, he thought about what else he might do to help the chicken. "I even thought about mouth-to-mouth," he said.
When he got home from work, Becky said, "I told him, 'you won't believe what your sister did.'"

Jackie spent another 15 minutes working to resuscitate the chicken, and at about 5:30 that afternoon they did use an appliance on it. Becky dried it out with a hair dryer.

"We kept her in ICU all night," Jackie said. ICU is a large cardboard box with a grain feeder and water in it. They also put a heater near it.

"The next day Jackie put her in a box on the front porch in the sunshine," Becky said. She said she was also sitting in the sunshine reading her Bible. "It started making a noise. I was reading about Lazarus being raised from the dead, and it jumped up on the edge of the box and was balancing there."

The chicken still had some problems with its legs, but little by little they have improved and she now gets around pretty well. When she was returned to the chicken yard, the other chickens starting "pecking" on her, and she's had to be segregated.

The Calhouns think the other chickens are taking advantage of the weaker one, but then again maybe the drowning wasn't an accident but a "fowl" deed.