The Trouble With Chickens

Sugar comes into the kitchen to talk to J.J. She explains how J.J. knocked himself out, and the chickens and Vince worked together to lock him in the crate. Sugar reveals that she ran away from the birdbath and came into the house voluntarily. As she talks, J.J. notices that she is using large vocabulary, like “behoove” and “rendezvous”—the same terms that were on the ransom note.

J.J. accuses Sugar of helping Vince with the kidnapping by writing the ransom notes. Sugar denies it at first, but then her mother, Moosh, comes into the kitchen and demands an explanation. Sugar admits that she did write the notes because Vince promised her access to the house’s library if she helped him with the kidnapping. Vince’s ultimate goal was to lure J.J. into the house.

Moosh is horrified that Sugar helped Vince take the chicks, but Sugar insists that Vince was never going to hurt Poppy and Sweetie. Vince overhears their conversation and tells Sugar to stop talking. He mocks J.J. and taunts him about his trip to the vet. Vince believes that Barb will get rid of J.J. when she comes home and finds her chickens dead. Hearing this news, Sugar realizes the chickens are in grave danger, and Vince plans to kill them and frame J.J. for it.

Panicked, J.J. asks Sugar to tell him everything. She reveals that there is one final step in her plan with Vince: when night falls, she and the other chickens are supposed to help him take his funnel off. J.J. reminds Sugar that Vince is a liar and will hurt the chickens. Moosh comes in and asks Sugar to come home with her, Dirt, Poppy, and Sweetie. Moosh still believes that once they take off Vince’s funnel, they can go home, and J.J. urges her to think about the danger they will be in once Vince can move freely.

Meanwhile, Dirt has been using the RHBWR training that J.J. taught her by Running, Hiding, Breathing, Watching, and Running. The chicks come into the kitchen and announce that the doggy door is now locked, and they can’t get out. Vince’s collar controls access to the door. Panicked, Moosh realizes that Vince is going to betray them. She thinks she can fight Vince herself, but Dirt comes up with her plan of escape.

It is finally nighttime, and J.J. and the chickens must rescue themselves from Vince’s plan. The chicks hide in the crate with J.J. while Moosh pecks open the lock. J.J. and the chicks wait inside the crate, and J.J. realizes that they are all counting on each other. He worries that something will go wrong with their plan since he knows that many rescue plans are unsuccessful.

Vince enters the kitchen, and Moosh offers to take off his funnel since she has the sharpest beak. Moosh pretends to peck the funnel but takes the door tag off Vince’s collar and kicks it to Sugar, who runs with it toward the crate. Vince dashes toward Sugar while J.J. bursts out of the crate, letting Vince slide past him and shutting the door behind him. Moosh relocks the crate with Vince inside. The chickens and J.J. are pleased and relieved that their plan was a success.

Now safe, J.J. tries to make sense of the whole story. He asks the chicks why they came into the house, and they explain that they liked the TV and the books. Vince shares that he suffers from a chronic ear infection, and he welcomed Sugar’s visits because she would scratch his ears with her beak. Moosh admits that she thought Sugar could be behind the ransom notes but did not know what to do about it and focused on finding Poppy and Sweetie. J.J. understands that Moosh was in a panic about her chicks and forgives her for not telling him about her “mother’s instinct” about Sugar.

Moosh admits that she cannot pay J.J. with the promised cheeseburger. The chickens return to the couch and invite J.J. to sit with them. J.J. gladly joins them, now feeling a sense of belonging with his chicken neighbors.

Vince got his ear tubes and returned to the house, where J.J. and the chickens can hear him crashing around with his even larger medical cone. Sugar is enjoying the books she snuck out of the house and teaching her family how to read them, too. The chicks often visit J.J. in his doghouse, where he tells them stories from his days as a search-and-rescue dog. J.J. hints that he has an interesting story about why he retired from rescue work and that maybe someday he will tell the chickens about it.