For weeks I have been searching for a small ray of light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t an oncoming train, and finally, the Universe came through for me when I was least expecting it: the laundry room.

When we first entertained moving back to the farm, we knew we wanted to reestablish the poultry flock. We also knew that we wanted to do things in general as naturally as possible.

Steve did his research and found that Guinea fowl are excellent at pest control, particularly ticks. While I still planned to douse the kids in insect repellent — several rounds of Lyme disease and one of Rocky Mountain spotted fever will do that to you — I was on board with more birds.

Being as that was almost 10 years ago, and we also really didn’t know what we were doing when the thimble-sized keets showed up, we are down to our last few birds.

Over the summer, while they were still laying rather robustly, I suggested to G that he might want to think about hatching a few more. Guineas take about a week longer to hatch than our chickens do, so G was quite surprised when he came home between practices in the middle of August to hear cheeping coming from the incubator. Extremely loud, rather irate cheeping. The phone call to me went something like, “I think I messed up and hatched a chicken.”

The little one was quite unhappy with being alone and demanded all of his attention. He started referring to her as the Menace. After a day of carrying on, I decided she needed a friend. Of course, you can’t just buy one friend, so now, instead of one chicken, we had five. And, in a few more days, one more Guinea finally hatched. It wasn’t one of his more successful clutches.

Throughout their stay in the brood box, Menace lived up to her name and was a feisty bird, escaping a few times, and generally being a little bully. I wasn’t sorry to send them out to the coop. Unfortunately, about a week after they went out, something got ahold of her.

When we put new chicks out, I like to go out every night to make sure they know how to find their way back into the coop. Sometimes they prefer to roost outside, but usually, it doesn’t take them long to figure out it’s warmer and safer inside. Well, that night, I found her huddled in the corner, bleeding from a hole in her back, and with her leg grotesquely bent under her.

She was still full of attitude, though, as I tried carrying her into the house to clean her up and examine her wounds. G joined me. He’s pretty good at giving them a quick stitch or two if they get into a fight with each other, or break a toenail, or a dozen other stupid things birds do to themselves, but he knew this didn’t look good. The wound was beyond stitching, and although the leg itself didn’t appear to be broken, it seemed something the leg was attached to might have been.

It was too late to call the vet, and honestly, a vet trip for a gravely injured chicken wouldn’t have been worth it. Menace was really putting us in a pickle. We cleaned her up as best we could and put her in a large shoebox for the night. As I closed the door of the laundry room (keeping her out of the dogs’ and cats’ purview) I said a silent prayer that the situation would resolve itself by morning.

No such luck. Ms. Menace was true to form early the next morning. Carrying on, flopping all over the box, trying to escape. So, G and I spent the next few days keeping the wound clean and trying to get her leg to stay in a position that would support her. The wound care went well, the splinting/crutching/casting not so much.

Over the next few weeks, we tried just about everything we could think of, from bracing her legs like we would have if she’d been born splay-legged, to rigging up a chicken harness and leash that G had, and suspending it from a rod over her box, so she was supported upright. By now she’d graduated from a shoebox to a furniture box.

It has been four months of rehab, but finally last week, when I walked into the laundry room, Menace was standing on two feet. One was still sort of sideways, and she was still walking like she’d had a few too many, but in the last few days, that has even started to straighten out. On top of all of it, she has started laying eggs. Come warmer weather, I think she’ll be ready to head back to the coop.

It’s been crazy. The last thing we needed was a laundry room chicken, especially one with an attitude, but helping something heal and thrive has managed to bring joy into what has been a rather frustrating few months.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News