Woman to wait eight years to retrieve diamond swallowed by chicken

Adapted from www.huffingtonpost.com

38-year-old Claire Lennon will be waiting up to eight years to retrieve a $466 diamond earring swallowed by her pet chicken, Sarah.

Sarah -- who is a male, despite his name -- plucked the earring right off of Lennon's ear while he was sitting on her shoulder, the Telegraph reported Monday. The earring became lodged in the bird's gizzard, and no amount of laxatives have been able to get it free.

Lennon's vet told her that an operation to retrieve the earring would kill Sarah, and rather than turn her avian pet into chicken soup, she's opting to wait it out until the bird dies of natural causes.

The vet informed Lennon that the platinum white gold surrounding the diamond would "distengrate" in the animal's gizzard. However, "the diamond is so hard it will not be damaged and will just stay there until Sarah dies, and then of course we can get it back," Lennon said, according to the Daily Mail.

The earring was part of a pair given to Lennon by her partner, Adam de Marco. The couple says a major reason they don't want to risk losing Sarah is because the loss would "devastate" their 6-year-old daughter, Mia.

Lennon also explained that the male bird is named "Sarah" because they originally thought he was a female. By the time they learned the truth, the name had already stuck.

Sarah is not the first beloved pet to chow down on diamonds. In 2011, a pup named "Honey Bun" ate $10,000 worth of jewels at a store in Albany, Ga.