Julia, the chicken who patrolled the parking lot and schmoozed with patio diners for many years at the Raven Grill at 1916 Bissonnet near Hazard St., passed away earlier this month of natural causes, a reader informs us. “We don’t know where she came from,” reads a note posted on the restaurant’s website, “only that she was a sweet bird who liked people and that she simply made us happy each time we saw her.”

Frequent diners of the Southampton-area restaurant have sent in their own website tributes to the “friendly and fearless” bird, who apparently exhibited much social grace in her daily appearances and egg-laying demonstrations for small impromptu gatherings of children, even while patrons devoured the carcasses of distant relatives only a few feet away:

She may have been ‘just a chicken’ but I watched Julia single-handedly form new friendships between diners. She was a tough, little city chicken. RIP Julia.

And:

***

I recently sent an email to a couple that we had not seen for quite awhile asking them to meet us at the Raven for dinner.
The wife emailed back, “We would love to join you. How is the chicken?”
I replied, “I don’t really know, we usually get the salmon.”
She responded, “I meant the live chicken that hangs around the property.”

• Remembering Julia [The Raven Grill]

Photos: The Raven Grill (top); Dwight Silverman (bottom)