Tillie the Chicken Visits Wayland's Library

Tillie the Chicken of “Tillie Lays An Egg,” fame clucked and scratched her way through a meet and greet at Wednesday.

Oh, and her owner, author Terry Golson, came along, too.

Golson’s  book, “Tillie Lays An Egg,” follows Tillie through her week as she explores various spaces around a farm and house, laying her eggs in unusual places along the way.

Rather than drawn or painted illustrations, the book is visually presented through staged photographs, shot by photographer Ben Fink.

The book invites children to take part in a sort of hidden pictures exercise with each photograph in which they answer the question, “Where has Tillie laid her egg?”

Besides reading her book during her library visit, Golson offered a number of quick facts about chickens, how they live and behave, their eggs and more.

“I have a lot to say about chickens,” said Golson, who keeps chickens and goats at her home in Carlisle, Mass. She explained that Tillie is a bantam white leghorn chicken, a very small breed of chicken, but Golson also has Polish hens and cinnamon queens.

“[Tillie is] like the Chihuahua of the chicken world,” Golson explained, helping children understand that breeds of chicken are as different as breeds of dogs.

As she walked through the crowd pointing out Tillie’s white earflaps, she explained that the color of a chicken’s earflaps indicates the color of its eggs.

Then, while Golson read her book, Tillie scratched in her cage, waiting for her next moment in the spotlight.

After learning about the chickens and hearing the book read, the children received a quick lesson in how to pet chickens – only pet in the direction of the feathers and don’t touch the ticklish comb.

With those instructions, Tillie came back out of her cage for a bit of hands-on contact. Each child took a turn petting Tillie as Golson held the well-mannered hen on her lap.

Golson does not run a commercial farm, but she does allow people a glimpse into her animals’ lives via webcams. Already a hen cam in the hen house and a goat cam allow people to watch the animals throughout the day. Next week, Golson will receive 15 chicks and has plans to set up a chick cam accessible through hencam.com.