The following day, after finally emptying the horse box of our four field gates, assorted spare fence posts and pieces of wood “that might come in handy one day”, and all the other remaining junk that we ridiculously decided to bring with us from Roquetaillade, we head off to Mike and Sue’s to retrieve our chickens.
Before attempting the round-up task, we have a cup of coffee and chat about the design of pens and houses, and about the weird and wonderful world of chickenality.
Simon is pleased to find that our feisty flock trustingly come running to get some food from him, and he adeptly catches all four happy hens, and pops them into their travelling cage, with a sight less fuss than the first time he had to do it. We stow them in the shade in the back of the car and set about dismantling their house once again. When the house is safely aboard the horse box, and all the various chicken accessories are loaded, we trundle off home, to the accompaniment of muffled clucks and burbles from the back of the car.
Lonely Chicken is still very wary of us, and runs into the dark safety of her big house as soon as we open the gate to our newly-constructed pen. We reassemble the little chicken house in the middle of the pen, on the levellest spot we can find, and then fetch the bird-full cage of flutter from the car.
The moment of truth has arrived…..
Now, as anyone who has ever come new to the keeping of animals, or the growing of plants, or the cooking of food, or whatever will know, if you ask the advice of people who have done it before, you will get as many different answers as the number of people you ask. Just check out the responses to questions posted on the many and varied forums (fora?) on the internet, and you will see what I mean.
Reading books by ‘experts’ does not help much either. We have three books about chickens and three about llamas, and they all say different things. Where there is the occasional bit of overlap or consistency, we think we may have stumbled upon a nugget of truth – or at least a reasonable generalisation. But for the most part, we have come to believe that the only real way to know about something is to do it for yourself, trust your intuition, and see what happens.
Much of what we have read and heard about chickens suggests that one should not mix together hens of a different type, or hens from different flocks, and that introducing new hens to an established flock at a later point is Not a Good Idea. But we had not planned on acquiring Lonely Chicken, and we certainly had no intention of keeping two separate flocks. If she was to happily continue her life at Blanchetière, she was just damn well going to have to learn to co-exist with the immigrant horde.
So, with Lonely still lurking in the hidden depths of the big chicken house, Simon carried the cage into the pen and opened the door. The Famous Four were eager to explore their New World, and tumbled over each other to get out and away, to nibble at the salty snack of sunflower seeds scattered invitingly around and about.
We watched. We waited.
Enticed from her lair by the unfamiliar ruffling, scratching sounds outside, Lonely suddenly loomed portentously in the shadowed doorway to her castle.
The unwitting intruders froze mid-step – necks long, eyes wide. Silence fell. Time caught its breath.
For a moment I feared for Lonely’s continued existence, imagining her vanishing messily in a flurry of white, black and red, beneath a rampant gang of brown-feathered yobs. But I need not have worried – not on her behalf anyway.
Lonely eyed the intruders beadily, stretched herself up tall and haughty, fluffed out her multi-coloured feathers into a big cloak of intimidation, and strode slowly, but purposefully towards them. This did not look like a friendly approach. Lonely was most certainly not extending a wing in welcome.
And the reaction of the Famous Four was instantaneous and unified. As one, they skittered towards the gate of the pen in a pathetic huddle, struggling comically to squeeze their pudgy forms through the impossibly narrow spaces between the vertical bars of the gate. It took a monumental act of willpower on my part to resist the urge to open the gate and let them scamper away to safety. “Oh No! This is awful….what shall we do?!”
As always, Simon remained serene and sensible. “For heaven’s sake, calm down. Let’s just wait and see….”
So we waited some more. And we watched. And what we saw was not pretty. But neither was it fatal. Or very long-lasting.
Being cornered by the gate, and unable to escape, the Famous Four took it in turns to suffer the Wrath of Lonely, and with varying degrees of enthusiasm, responded to her challenge. On reflection, Lonely’s reaction to the invasion of her now-circumscribed space by a mob of unpredictable foreigners was perfectly understandable. Better not to wait and see if their intentions were honourable. Better instead to pile in, all guns blazing, and make absolutely sure that her position as Queen of the Castle was thoroughly appreciated by all and sundry right from the outset.
And after half an hour or so of very unladylike squabbling, clawing, pecking, feather-pulling and squawking – giving true meaning to the term ‘hen-fight’ – a New Order was established. Lonely completely and utterly vanquished the interlopers, and an uneasy truce held sway.
The Unquiet Quintet went about their usual chickeny business, scratching in the dirt for bugs and ripping small shoots of green untimely from the mother earth. For the first time since our arrival, Lonely Chicken was indulging in what we have come to believe is happy-chicken behaviour. Instead of skulking fearfully in the gloom of her woebegone abode, she was out-and-about, scratching and preening and occasionally side-swiping a passing chicken with a little peck, just to make sure they didn’t forget who was boss of the patch.
As time wore on, we began to think that Lonely may have overdone things a little in her bid to establish her place at the top of the pecking order. Now that she no longer felt threatened, and was more confident of what this New World Order held in store for her, Lonely wanted to be accepted as part of the gang. She would follow the other chickens to a shady corner where some interesting crawling food had been spotted, only to find that as soon as she appeared alongside them the other chickens would move away. In fact, wherever she was, they wanted not to be. And even when they had stopped running away in abject fear, they would still step aside and turn away whenever she approached.
And at the end of the long and eventful day, as dusk settled softly over the dusty long-shadowed hummocks of Chickenland, Lonely trudged unobtrusively back into the cavernous obscurity of her solitary castle, to roost aloof and alone once again, leaving her new-found not-friends to huddle chummily together in the cosiness of their much-travelled slum, and gossip about what a speckled black/brown/grey/white supremacist bitch she was.
