Fowl Play
7am: “COOO-COOO-COOO-COOOOK.” “COOO-COOO-COOO-COOOOK.”
I am wont to wake my neighbours with what I like to call my
chicken summoning voice. Like a
Sunday-school mother intoning her children to wake for Jesus, I like to call my
chicken children for breakfast. It is a
rather high-pitched, and I have it on good authority from the Husband, ‘shrill
and annoying’ call, accompanied by a rhythmic shaking of the corn cup, which I
percuss like a rattle in time to the ‘COOOKS’ of my poultry wailing.
Leghorn was the first of my flock to spy the rhythmic corn
cup in my hand. She duly bolted towards
me, then in a split-second of chicken brained indecision she braked, flapping and
squawking past me in a particularly ungainly manner. [She reminds me of Vern
from John van der Ruit’s ‘Spud’ books i.e. totally gormless and a dare I say a
spot simple.]
“COOO-COOO-COOO-COOOOK’, shake-shake.
I found Fat Elvis and Near-Death sitting broodily on their
nesting boxes. Both bristled and eyed me
with a beady eye, sharp beaks poised should I attempt to steal their eggs. Which I would have done had their been any
eggs, but alas both ladies have become terribly broody and stopped laying. Instead they sit about endlessly for days on
end, hoping that their unfertilized eggs will hatch into darling chicks. Sabotaged by their baby boxes they have turned
into feathered-balls of pecking fury.
Hoping for some new eggs I lift them off their nests, using my
protective oven-gloves (Please don’t mock me, chickens have very sharp beaks and I have only just gotten over my fear of their 'large
talons'). Nothing.
“COOOO-COOOO-COOOO-COOOK”, shakedy-shake-shake.
I look around for Queenie (the chicken, not the niece) my
favourite bird (don’t tell the others) she is usually the tamest and keenest
for a bit of grub. This morning she is
noticeably absent.
“COOOO-COOOO-COOOO-COOOK”, shakedy-shake-shake. "AAAARGGGH! QUEEENIE, NOOOOOOO!"
She’s gone. Taken by
the tinkers who were after the Husband or something more sinister, wild cat?
Lion? Monkeys. I bet it was those damned
monkeys who chased her round the garden a few weeks ago. My poor beloved bird reduced to the contents of a feather pillow.
“Queenie,” I say, casting my teary-eyes skyward, I can
almost see her in the big old bird box in the sky, scratching up grubs, free
from earthly pain and monkeys. My vision
of heaven is so good that I can see her silhouette against the clouds, framed
by the leaves of the Avo-tree. Oh, wait...that is Queenie...in the avo-tree. She’s ALIVE. She’s alive.
But sweet mother, those bloody monkeys have plucked the old
girl’s back end somewhat…I would post a picture, but it's all too foul. It seems a spot perverse to parade her near naked bottom to this cruel world and I'm not up for that sort of monkey-business.
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