By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Lucky the Rooster is living the high life.
The chick rescued in May from a wastebasket in the Board of Education office is enjoying comfort and perks in a sylvan setting on Zion Road.
It lives most of the time in a cage in a picture window of the living room of the log cabin home of Bonnie and Randy Coddington, who agreed to friend Teresa Mota’s request to save the little guy from a fate she couldn’t bear to contemplate.
Ms. Mota, who is secretary to School Board Administrator Aiman Mahmoud, said Lucky was given its name after being plucked from the trash in May. It was one of a dozen or so eggs being hatched by the office personnel in sympatico with kindergarten classes around the district, who watched chicks hatch in incubators in five elementary schools.
All but one of the office’s eggs hatched, and that one was tossed away until custodian Ursula Gorka heard a faint chirping. When someone suggested throwing the egg out — it surely wouldn’t live — Ms. Mota and co-workers said that was “not an option!” and revved up the incubator again to warm the egg until it hatched.
When the farmer came to round up the chicks, Ms. Mota said she learned the females would be taken to a farm for a life of laying eggs. Males, however, faced a different fate, she learned. They would be given over for raptor food, she was told, and that was simply unacceptable to her.
She asked her friends to take in the chick, and they did. Lucky now lives next to the television and often comes out to watch a show on the lap, leg or shoulder of Diane or Randy Jr.
Lucky lives on the property that backs up on the 1,800-acre wooded Sourland Mountain preserve.
In the chicken coop in the back live five red-feathered young ladies waiting for Lucky’s attention, and a potential friend or rival in a cocky rooster named Little Man. Two rather large pet turkeys — one raised from an egg by the Coddingtons — also live in the coop. A frisky rescued mutt named Blake exuberantly welcomes strangers to the property.
Diane Coddington, who knows Ms. Mota from growing up in town and from their common association with the Somerset Valley Players theater group down the hill in Neshanic, knew instantly she couldn’t say no to taking in the chick.
At the Coddingtons, Lucky continued his chirpy loquaciousness that distracted office workers. Then daughter Crystal thought about putting a mirror in the cage to trick Lucky into thinking he wasn’t alone. It seemed to help.
