Somehow or another, she fell out of the main coop into the greenhouse and spent the day examining the yard. That was until she was cornered and promptly took off. I got the sad news after returning from a day long out of town conference. With the large number of raccoons, feral cats, possums and such that wander the streets and unseasonably frigid nighttime temperatures, I thought our hen was good as gone. Two days later, we spotted her in a neighbor's front yard. Again, she was cornered and took off in the opposite direction.
After properly securing the exit route, I printed and passed out fliers in search of our hen, who always happened to pop up a house or two away at dusk and at dawn. After 5 days of searching, a neighbor found her perched on their fence. After a brief chase into some thorny bushes our Sex Link was back at home.
A classic case of the instinctive pecking order syndrome reared its ugly head in our coop and our two hens were determined to show their stuff anytime my back was turned. I ended up separating them from the rest of the flock to maintain some order. We haven't gotten an egg since that first day and hoped that keeping the layers calm might do the trick. That effort led to tonight's expansion/near completion of a new east wing on the coop and the covering of the adjoining passive solar greenhouse. While I bought a roll of chicken wire, assorted bungee cords, and more roofing nails, the bulk of new construction came from piecing together materials laying around the yard.