I met Peanut, 21, the world's oldest chicken (2024)

In a cloudy afternoon, deep in Woods or Michigan, I sit down for an exclusive interview: the first meeting between a member of the International Press and the world's oldest chicken.

Her name is Peanut.

Her owner, Marsi Parker Darwin, a retired librarian, has made two chairs next to a Croquet lawn in the garden without killing, where she lives with her husband Bill.peanut is in a mandband, like a movie star waiting in her trailer.Parker Darwin opens the lid and carefully lift herOn to the grass.

My first impression of the bird is that, like many celebrities, she is less than you expect that she is also feathers, and spraying feathers out her feet, in a bloom that I think of Elton John.

"She has always been a distinctive chicken," said Parker Darwin, 71. "It was one of the ways in which we could prove her age.", and Tony Blair was still popular.

At that time it seemed like a miracle that she survived at all."She was an unmarried egg in the nest," said Parker Darwin.Egg is probably dead. "She didn't want anyone to eat it, so she was wearing it on the edge of a pond nearby.""I heard a sound."

Later she heard that peanuts missed an egg on the mouth to break the scale.Were right peanut?"

Peanut agrees.Or at least she turns the grass and goes against my ankle.Lap and place the small bird upstairs.feathers.

Peanut's mother did not recognize the chicken as one of her, so Parker Darwin Peanut took the house and placed her under a heat lamp.Mother would do, "she said."I think she thought I was her mother. "Peanut would ride in the bag of her jacket. After a few years she placed Peanut in a chicken run with her other chickens where she picked up a rooster called Lance."I'm sure he's the father of most of her children, "said Parker Darwin.

Lance died a long time ago, just like many of her chickens.A personality, "said Parker Darwin."But now she is a Frumpy old chicken. "

In the meantime, Peanut has recorded Benny de One -Yeyed schedule, a bird that must be less than half of its age.

Parker Darwin cuts peanuts and we follow a twisted unpaved road along the barn where her husband makes colored glass windows, to the small wooden house that is their home.Her and then turns, immerse her head and hurry towards her.Hard to say."I have to take her out before she is stuck under the bush," said Parker Darwin.

At the end of 2019, when the winter arrived, Peanut apparently started to take the door to the house and asked to let in."I thought," why not? "Said Parker Darwin."Let her live out of her life where she started it.

A friend who was visited to wonder about his age.He had read about a chicken named Matilda, who lived up to 16 and was recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest living chicken.Lived more than 23. But she was definitely a challenger for a record.

Parker Darwin has photos of the chicken with her Niese, Mya, when both were three years old.

In the spring, just before Peanut 21, a letter from Guinness arrived and confirmed its place in the history of the poultry.My girl peanut and me.

What is her secret?This is why journalists twenty years ago visit the old visits, as a correspondent for Southwark News, I interviewed a woman.South Londs."I wish I hadn't done that."

Peanut, which should be at least 100 in chicken years, has not already had a distant house.Her.We became such good friends all those years. "

Peanut now lives in the cage of a parrot in the living room of Parker Darwin, which is also occupied by three parrots.Now also everyone.

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