EastHenders Episode Two: “Eggs of Significance”

A few more days pass. The sun shines down on Chickenland, sliding shifting shadows around the edges as the hours tick away, and fluffy white clouds drift across the square of blue that is the entirety of the sky the chickens can see see from the nestled safety of their little pen.

Lonely maintains her rule of the flock with a diminishing need for recourse to violence. One look from her beady eyes is sufficient to quash any hint of subordination, and Pretty, Other and Naughty appear largely unworried by the changes that have taken place.

Big, having carefully considered her new position during her quiet evening moments alone, has decided to salvage a modicum of dignity, and instead of running away when Lonely’s sharp beak of disapproval pecks in her direction, she adopts a strategy of freezing, so as to avoid attracting further antagonistic attention. At the food bowl, this does at least mean that she does not have to give up her place and risk missing out entirely on the tasty morsels that appear there occasionally, courtesy of the Big People who don’t finish their dinners.

Lonely, finding herself unexpectedly safe and powerful among a group of her own species, with a plentiful supply of good food which appears regularly without any risk to life or wing, starts to produce eggs regularly. And having watched the daily comings and goings of her cohort, following them in and out of the Little Hen House to see what they are up to, she has discovered the perfect place to lay her produce.

The ridiculously abundant daily yield of cholesterol-ridden bundles increases yet further to include one more small, smooth, long egg that refuses to subscribe to the notion of the normal shape implied by egg-boxes and trays the world over.  There is no getting away from the fact that Lonely is a Different Chicken and her eggs are Different Eggs.

Over the next few weeks the New Pecking Order metamorphoses into the status quo, and as Big accommodates to the change, her hormones conform. She also begins to lay again, and during one of her intermittent trips to the nest box, she stumbles across the tiny, strangely-shaped offering that Lonely has deposited there earlier that day. She can barely suppress a snort of derision at its contemptible insignificance. “Call that an egg?”, she chuckles to herself . And suddenly she sees an opportunity to reassert her superiority within the flock.

Over the next three days, Big refrains from laying anything at all, and concentrates instead on hatching her come-back plan.  And on the third day she rises once again from her ignominious state of humiliation, and emerges victorious through the darkened door of the Litle Hen House to loudly proclaim herself The Layer of The Biggest Egg in the history of Chickenland.

One by one, the other chickens, their curiousity aroused by Big’s boundless struttings and crowings, visit the site of her latest creation. They gasp with awe. That is indeed a Very Big Egg. She may have been a bully and a tyrant, and they may all have taken silent pleasure in seeing her toppled from her throne and made to eat the dirt of justice, but they cannot help but be impressed with what she has achieved. Even Lonely, acutely aware that her own eggs are somewhat lacking in majesty, feels a grudging sense of respect creeping through her rosy comb.

The wheels of Chicken World creak imperceptibly, as the Balance of Power shifts once again. Just a little.

Big and Lonely face each other across the ramp to the Little Hen House. Their eyes meet. The midday sun casts round black shadows beneath their rigid bodies. Big does not look away.

And after a second or two, in which unspoken words acknowledge All That Has Just Occurred, the two hens turn away from each other at exactly the same moment, and walk off to opposite corners of the pen, wings behind their backs, scanning the dusty ground for ants.

Pretty and Other Chicken stand side by side, burbling softly to each other, scratching their heads and wondering What Just Happened.  

Naughty Chicken stands slightly apart, silent and knowing. As a Contender herself, she is wise in the ways of the warrior. She watches and she understands. Her time will come.