NEW GLOUCESTER — The chicken crossed the road for cheese.

And it has turned her into something of a celebrity.

“I think it’s pretty cool to have your chicken on Facebook,” said 10-year-old Ana Lipp, who owns L.C. the chicken with her 8-year-old sister, Jane.

For the past several months, L.C. has regularly abandoned her cozy coop to stroll across the street and down the road to a tiny market and eatery called the New Gloucester Village Store. Sometimes she’ll wander around outside, pecking at the ground and drinking out of puddles. Other times she’ll sneak inside — or a customer will hold the door open for her — and she’ll spend some time visiting with the locals and indulging in handouts of her favorite treat, provolone cheese.

L.C. became so popular with customers that the store started posting photos of her on its Facebook page. There visitors can see her pecking at the breakfast special, posing with a carton of farm fresh eggs, and staring in apparent astonishment at a flier touting the store’s free coffee promotion.

Her popularity was recently enhanced by a story on the local TV news.

“The chicken now has gained a fair degree of notoriety,” store owner Sam Coggeshall said.

The Lipp family got L.C. and her five sisters about a year and a half ago when they were chicks. To the family’s dismay, the baby chickens got picked off one by one by wild animals. The Lipps called the lone survivor L.C. for “Last Chicken.”

The Lipps started leaving L.C.’s coop open during the day so she could wander the yard while the girls were at school and their parents, Kim and Fred Lipp, were at work. They assumed that’s all she did, anyway.

At the New Gloucester Community Fair in October, they learned L.C. had been maintaining a secret life. 

“People at the fair started saying, ‘Oh, I saw your chicken crossing the road!’ or ‘I saw your chicken at the Village Store!'” the girls’ mom said. “That’s how we found out.”

The family worries about L.C. crossing the road, but she’s a headstrong chicken. If it’s daylight, the weather is nice and the coop is open, more often than not she goes over to the store, clucking happily and moving in a kind of swift hop-run. At least, Kim Lipp said resignedly, L.C. looks both ways before crossing the street.

“And now the neighborhood knows. I think people know to watch out for the chicken,” she said.

L.C. doesn’t wander to the store only on her own. Sometimes she’ll follow Ana and Jane over, too.

“Hey, L.C., let’s get some food at the Village Store!” Ana called to the chicken after she and her sister got home from school one day last week.

The girls love that L.C. has become so well known in their neighborhood and that her photos are so prominently displayed on the store’s Facebook page.

“I think she’s a very interesting chicken,” Jane said.

The Lipp family also has a pet rabbit, but she stays home. The Lipps are pretty sure.

“She’s not become a celebrity,” Kim Lipp said. “Though for all I know she’s hanging out at the Village Store, too, and it’s just nobody’s told us yet.”

Have an idea for a pet feature? Contact Lindsay Tice at 689-2854 or e-mail her at ltice@sunjournal.com.

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