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• Mary Jo returned home around 10 p.m., followed chirping outside her apartment complex, and found a baby chick alone in the city

• She brought it upstairs, improvised a warm setup with a popcorn chip box and her sweater, and cared for it for three days

• The chick now lives with her mom, who calls it “Chatty Cathy,” and Mary Jo says the viral moment reminded her that small acts of care matter

A tiny chirp in the dark is easy to miss, especially after a long day caring for family. But when Mary Jo heard it outside her apartment close to 10 p.m. local time, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

“So my mom had just had foot surgery and she takes care of my grandma,” Mary Jo tells PEOPLE, explaining she’d spent several days helping at home while her mom was “less mobile.” She rarely leaves quickly, but this time an anxious urgency pushed her to drive the hour back to the city.

The unease lingered when she parked and stepped out of her car. She remembered hearing birds chirping and immediately thinking how strange it was that any bird would be making noise that late at night.

At first she tried to ignore it and start unloading. But the chirping grew persistent, loud enough that the animal lover in her felt compelled to follow the sound around the corner of her building.

About 30 feet away, she spotted a small bird on the ground. From a distance it seemed too large to be a typical fallen nestling, and for a moment she wondered if it might be a baby crow.

Still, one thought kept resurfacing. “My mom has chickens,” she says, describing how her intuition nudged her toward the unlikely conclusion even before she got closer.

Instead of fleeing, the tiny bird walked straight up to her feet and allowed itself to be picked up. “Poor thing,” she says softly now, convinced it was cold and scared enough to trust the first person it encountered. To Mary Jo, the chick’s stillness felt almost like a silent plea to be warmed and cared for.

Out of instinct, she pulled out her phone and began recording directly in TikTok. In the now-viral clip, her disbelief unfolds in real time: “You guys, I just got home and I found a chicken,” she said, gently reassuring the bird in her hands.

Practical worries quickly followed the shock. “It’s so cold. I have a cat upstairs. My boyfriend’s not answering the phone,” she said in the video, trying to process how a baby chicken could possibly be outside her apartment.

Upstairs, her reaction shifted instantly into action. Mary Jo said she slipped into “caregiver mode,” calling her mom for guidance and assembling a makeshift setup with whatever she had nearby.

The solution was improvised but effective. She placed the chick in a Costco popcorn chip box lined with her own sweater, then added water and a heating pad to stabilize it.

“I took the sweater off of my back and put it in there,” she tells PEOPLE. Even after settling the chick, she remained in shock for nearly half an hour, still stunned she’d found a baby chicken in the middle of the city.

She cared for it in her apartment for three days while juggling her move. Knowing the bird needed a more stable environment, she ultimately drove it back to her mom’s home, where it could grow safely before joining the outdoor flock.

Today, the chick is thriving there. Mary Jo hasn’t visited yet, but she keeps up through FaceTime updates, watching it grow and hearing about its increasingly vocal personality.

How it reached her apartment complex remains a mystery. “No, I truly don’t know why there was a chicken there,” she says. “It still baffles me.”

She ruled out nearby ownership after searching the complex for signs of chickens. Other possibilities — abandonment or a hawk dropping it — remain speculation, but none change what she experienced that night.

At her mom’s house, the chick stays indoors for now and has taken an unexpected interest in the family dogs. In one video her mom sent, it responds to barking with its own noises, prompting a joking conclusion: the chicken thinks it’s a dog.

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Naming it was easier than explaining its origin. Her mom now calls the chatty little bird “Chatty Cathy,” a name that stuck as its personality emerged.

Looking back, Mary Jo can’t ignore the timing. “It’s so weird the way the universe gave me a chicken at this time in my life,” she says, noting the chaos of moving and starting a new job.

The viral response has reshaped how she sees the moment. What felt surreal and personal that night became, for many viewers, a small story of care in an overwhelming world. “Everything happens for a reason,” she tells PEOPLE.

Read the original article on People