A Berkshire, U.K. woman must wait eight years to get her diamond earring back, which is valued at around $466 (£300), and all because her pet chicken decided it would make for a tasty treat, the Telegraph reports.
Charlie Lennon, 38, must wait until her six-month old chicken, Sarah, grows old and dies, as vets say the earring is lodged in the bird's stomach, and a potential operation could endanger the chicken's life.
"The vet said he could operate to recover the earring, but that might kill Sarah, which would devastate our six-year-old daughter Mia, who dotes on the chicken," Lennon said to the Telegraph. "So we'll have to wait till Sarah gets old and dies, but they live to a ripe old age - we are probably looking at another eight years before I get my earring back."
Sarah was sitting on Lennon's shoulder when he (the chicken is in fact a cockerel, but his owners thought he was a "she" as a chick) decided to peck at the earring, giving his owner a "sudden sharp pain" in her earlobe when he took it out of her ear. Lennon and her partner, Adam de Marco, put the chicken in a cage and waited to see if the earring would pass through, but to no avail.
"The X-ray showed it was stuck firmly in the gizzard so Carl [the vet] gave Sarah some laxatives, hoping it would pass," Lennon said. "But it didn't work, it's still stuck fast and we have accepted it is trapped inside and won't come out. The vet said over the weeks and months, the platinum white gold would disintegrate and be ground down by the grit and stuff that hens eat to aid their digestion. But the diamond is so hard it will not be damaged and will just stay there in the until Sarah dies and then of course we can get it back."
Lennon joked that he must be the "most expensive chicken in the country" now, explaining that the earring is very sentimental to her as de Marco got her the earrings as a gift.
"At least we know where the earring is - and one day I will get it back, even if it means waiting for a few years," she said.
Click here to see photos of Charlie Lennon with Sarah, the chicken who swallowed her diamond earring, as well as an X-ray photo of the bird's stomach where the earring now resides.
