A chicken who participates in Civil War reenactments has been reunited with his owner after the teenage boy lost him at a Cracker Barrel in Cullman, Alabama.
The chicken, whose name was Peep, got lost after his owner, 18 year old Thomas Ramsey of Gallman, Mississippi, stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel after he, a friend, and Peep, were part of a Civil War reenactment in Springhill, Tennessee. The teen tied Peep to the bed of the truck while the boys went inside to eat, only to find that during lunch, Peep had gotten loose.
“I went back into the Cracker Barrel, and it was very hard for me to say this with a straight face, even though I was panicking: ‘Do you have cameras in the parking lot? I think someone stole my chicken," Ramsey told The Cullman Times. Someone overheard and said they'd seen the chicken wandering through the parking lot.
Animal Control was called and several posts went out on Cullman Facebook pages asking for folks to keep an eye out for the lost fowl. Ramsey was about thirty minutes from home when he got the message that Peep had been found. A local farmer named John Watson drove Peep to be reunited with Ramsey in Birmingham.
“I believe in paying it forward,” said Watson to The Cullman Times. “God has blessed my family so much throughout the years, I believe we should be kind to our fellow man. Yes, it was ‘just a chicken,’ but it was his, and he clearly cared for it.”
Ramsey reportedly participates in about 16-20 reenactments each year, spending hours each day researching for each event. The Springhill, Tennessee event was Peep's third Civil War reenactment.