The ritual happens nearly every morning.

Moto, a 2-year-old Araucana chicken, pecks at the sliding glass door to Kyle Monahan’s bedroom, asking to be let in. She hops into his bed and settles near his thigh, where Kyle’s curled fingers can graze her feathers. Over the next few hours Kyle, 24, will smile listening to her clucking and babbling. When the room is quiet and the time is right, she’ll lay an egg practically into his hand.

Toni Franklin checks on Kyle. (Photos by Samantha Swindler/Staff)

“Good morning, buddy!” said Toni Franklin, Kyle’s caregiver of nine years, on Wednesday morning. “Did she lay anything yet?”

Kyle can’t speak, but the answer was no, not yet. When I visited his family’s goat dairy, Moto had been on the bed for more than hour.

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Elisabeth Bueschen-Monahan with her son Kyle, and Moto the Chicken.

Kyle’s mom, Elisabeth Bueschen-Monahan – Lise for short – kept watch.

“The first time she laid an egg in his bed we were like, ‘Oh my God, this is so amazing,’ ” Lise said. “Then the next morning it happened again, and it just kept happening.”

Several months later, Moto has become somewhat of an attraction at Fraga Farm. Two young couples participating in an international program to volunteer at organic farms are living here for the summer, and they will approach Kyle's room to ask, "Is the chicken in the house?"

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Moritz the goat.

Fraga Farm, in Gales Creek in western Washington County, produces certified organic goat cheese, a designation that means the farm doesn’t use pesticides. Instead, the family has about 15 chickens, and they’re given free rein to wander the property in search of bugs. These are working chickens — well socialized but not generally coddled and certainly not let into the house.

But one day, when the door to Kyle’s room was open, Moto sauntered in, checked out the place, and decided this would be her new roosting spot.

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Moto in her happy place.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns against snuggling chickens because they can carry salmonella and other potentially contagious bacteria. And yet, when Moto made this connection with Kyle, the family decided not to stop it.

“We kind of struggled with that a little bit,” Lise said. “Is this OK? Are there germs? Are they OK germs? We just decided that it's too important for quality of life, and he has not gotten sick.”

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When Lise was pregnant with Kyle, her first child, she and her husband, Steve, traveled to her hometown in Germany so Lise’s family could attend Kyle’s birth. Kyle was born with breathing difficulties and at 6 months old underwent surgery to improve his airway. In the hospital, he contracted an infection that caused a dangerously high fever and massive brain damage.

“Up to that point he had medical issues, but he was a neurologically normal child,” Lise said. “After that, he was legally blind and had cerebral palsy and was just incredibly frail and was actually not supposed to survive.

“And, you know, the first few years of something like that are really hard, because you can't accept that you might just have a child that is of that level of need forever.”

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Kyle in his room.

Lise’s way of coping was to have another child. Two years after heading to Germany, the family returned home to the San Francisco area with two babies – Kyle and his younger sister, Frannie. A few years later, another daughter, Heather, came along.

When Kyle was 12, he had a series of near-fatal surgeries and was placed in home hospice care. Lise had always liked the cooler climate of Oregon, and while mentally preparing for Kyle’s death, the family began plans to move here as “an after Kyle thing.”

When, despite all odds, Kyle slowly got better, Lise thought, why wait?

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Work on Fraga Farm goat dairy.

Nine years ago, the family moved into a century-old farmhouse in Gales Creek. In 2012, they bought Fraga Farms and moved the dairy operation to their 34-acre home.

Today, they have 52 milking goats and produce 200 pounds of certified organic goat cheese a week. You can find their products at People's Food Co-op, Food Front Cooperative Grocery and New Seasons Market locations in Hillsboro, Beaverton and parts of Portland.

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Kyle and Moto.

I asked Lise how much Kyle understands about what’s happening around him.

“We don't really know,” Lise said. “We read him all the Harry Potters just in case.”

They do know Kyle benefits from the auditory stimulation of a busy farm. Each new batch of chicks spends their first days in a pen in Kyle’s room. Lise places a few on Kyle’s wheelchair tray so he can feel their downy bodies and hear their peeps.

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Heather Monahan plays the harp.

On Wednesday morning, Heather plucked a dreamy tune on a harp outside Kyle’s bedroom. She’s headed to Boston this fall on a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music. She has a theory that Moto remembers her first days as a chick in Kyle’s room.

“So, she's like a salmon, going back to where she was as a child to lay her eggs,” she said.

Lise, though, points out that none of the other chickens have ever pecked to be let into the house.

“We can't entirely come up with a plausible explanation,” she said. “You always look for logical or scientific explanations. Sometimes there's something that sort of defies that and we just decide to call it magic, right? So, we just decided to call this magic.”

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Kyle and Moto.

Moto also seems connected to Kyle himself. One morning, Toni said, she shooed Moto away to change Kyle’s bed sheets while Kyle sat in his shower chair. The chicken flew to the shower and sat on Kyle’s lap. Other times she’s jumped onto his stroller when he’s in the yard.

Wednesday, Moto waited until Toni’s back was turned to lay her egg for the day. The chicken cackled, then jumped onto the railing of Kyle’s bed and onto the floor.

“It’s a gift. It’s a chicken that sees Kyle as a special person,” Lise said. “An animal recognizes the personhood of someone who we try so hard to say, ‘This is a person.’ And the animal is like, ‘Of course it's a person. It’s my person.’ There's something really special about that.”

-- Samantha Swindler is a columnist for The Oregonian/Oregonlive

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oregonian.com

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