Chicken Strippers

So here is the post about chickens that I didn’t promise to write …….

When we first got our chickens last year, I wrote a post (Fear and Loathing in Las Chickenas) in which I went public about my feather phobia. For those of you too lazy or incompetent to follow the link to remind yourselves of the content, here is the final paragraph from that hazy, bygone day in August 2008:

 “So for the time being, all is lovely in the chicken-garden. And perhaps by the time the moulting season comes around, the sight of tumble-weed balls of scraggy brown feathers rolling erratically around my feet will no longer fill me with the gut-wrenching, cardiac-arrest-inducing anxiety levels of a virtual-reality horror movie.”

Well, last autumn and winter came and went with an awful lot of rain, a considerably large number of eggs, and no sign of moulting whatsoever. The moult-free experience lulled me into a false sense of security, and as time passed, I continued to congratulate myself on the progress I was making toward combating my phobia.

Although I still cannot bring myself to actually touch my beloved feathery friends, and I still sit rigid with clenched jaw and white knuckles while the chickens pootle about beneath the garden furniture (unable to relax in case one of the over-familiar beasties decides to flutter up onto the arm of my chair to share in my enjoyment of a bag of crisps), I have managed to hold small cups of milk to their beaky mouths during long hours of chicken sickness, and even to remove the odd little brown feather from the hen house, when cleaning out their poo in the morning (albeit with a plastic-bag-covered hand, and averted eyes).

My progress was slightly impeded when the disappearance of Pretty and Big Chicken resulted in us getting black replacements. When we were ordering them in the local chicken-ordering shop, the idea of having some different coloured chickens seemed like a good one. It was only when we got them home and released them into the limited freedom of the chicken pen, where they proceeded to move about in a fast, black and feathery sort of manner, that I remembered that black feathers are Definitely The Worst Feathers of All. And Pushy Chicken’s complete and utter lack of fear or respect for humans, so that she will not even consider the possibility of running away from me when I approach the pen to carry out some hitherto routine task, but instead rushes towards me to stand insolently on my feet, had re-awakened a degree of freaked-outness in me that I had hoped was history.

But I was just about dealing with it. I was just mastering the art of continuing to walk forward in a straight line, carrying a bowl of chicken-treats (mouldy cheese, stale bread and the like), ignoring the big black bundle of animated featherage ominously visible in my peripheral vision and bumping arrogantly into my wellingtoned shins, whilst breathing sl-o-w-ly-and-d-ee-p-ly, and concentrating on NOT imagining Pushy Chicken flapping up onto my bowl-carrying hand (in case thinking about it made it happen), when Autumn crept in with the Moulting Instructions.

And suddenly, before I could run a million miles away and hide in a small, padded white room, It had started. The Worst Nightmare of the chicken-owning pteronophobic.

At first there were just a few more whitish, greyish little fluffy offenders dotted about the pen and the chicken house, where Lonely Chicken tends to hang out. Nothing too unbearable. Easy enough to just look the other way, as I passed by.

But then her tail feathers started to unravel, and as she became progressively balder and more stumpy-looking, so the chicken pen, and pretty much all the yard outside the front of our house, became festooned with an uncomfortably large sprinkling of increasingly large feathers. Pretty, multicoloured feathers indubitably (in an objective manner of viewing), but tremendously discomforting nonetheless.

And even as I attempted to plot their whereabouts on my crazy-mental maps of places-not-to-look, and places-not-to-go, so that I could safely traverse my homeland like a well-trained soldier in a minefield, the guerilla Autumn wind would flurry them about here, there and everyfeatherywhere, so that a relaxing stroll through the garden became a memory of premoultous Times Past.

Gradually the featheriness began to take over my mind. The feather nightmares returned (I don’t even want to think about them long enough to describe them), and I began to wake as I did when a child, uncomfortable with the heavy knowledge that my head was resting on a pillow full of the unspeakable. Of course, we actually have foam pillows now, but old mental habits die hard, and the thought of the pillows I used to not-sleep on lurks evilly beneath my consciousness, ready to ambush my off-guard mind whenever it stumbles carelessly into that shady valley between the dark sierras of sleep and the rugged bluffs of wakefulness.

Tired of battling with my messed-up subconscious, I declared that, for the time being, Simon would have to take sole responsibility for all things chicken. While I reckoned I could still just about manage to let them out of their houses on the alternate days when it was my turn to get up and do the Early Things, Simon was going to have to do the chicken-house cleaning, water bowl filling and egg collecting, particularly since Pushy chooses always to lay her eggs in the furthest, deepest, darkest corner of the big house, on the other side of what feels like an acre of feather-strewn floor (deliberately, to wind me up, I am certain).

But after a few days of this regime I have sort of got a bit bored of the whole phobia thing. It just seems too much effort to call Simon to do something with the chickens, when he is busily engaged in some other immensely worthwhile activity, and I am just standing around right next to the chicken pen, doing nothing important whatsoever. Who’d have thought my Can’t-Be-Arsedness would turn out to be a more powerful determinant of my behaviour than my fear? (Probably anyone who knows me reasonably well, actually – which of course does not include myself.)

Added to which, I have begun to appreciate the brighter side of The Moulting. There are few things funnier than watching Lonely trying to ascend to her customary high roosting place without the benefit of a full set of tail and wing feathers – struggling along the edge of a hay-rack half way up the wall; sizing up the ascent required; squatting ready for take-off; summoning up all her chicken-brained courage….. and then going for it – only to miss by a mile and tumble farcically to the ground, a clucking flop-ball of indignity. And then to watch her do the same thing again. And again…..

Indeed, even when she is not attempting missions impossible, and is simply going about her normal daily business, the mere sight of her bopping around the yard half-dressed, with empty air where her sail-like tail used to be, a scraggy shadow of her former magisterial self, can bring a smile to my phobia-furrowed face.

      Before                                                                          After

Which is all Just As Well.

Because now Other Chicken has decided to doff her feathery duds and join in the Get Naked for Winter Party, and Pushy Chicken has discovered the fun that is to be had in leaving the occasional Very Large Black feather where the puppies can pick it up and chase me with it. And Simon is off to England in a few days time, leaving me alone to choke on my popcorn whilst experiencing the wide-screen, surround-sound version of the virtual-reality horror movie known hereabouts as The Moulting.