Les Lamas de l'Aubaine

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.

Sunday morning arrives quietly. A few fluffy brown feathers, tinged orange in the low morning sunlight, drift like tumbleweed across the still alleyways of Chickenland – silent reminders of the previous night’s violent encounter.

Simon opens the door to the Little Hen House and sprinkles grain around the pen, in the time-honoured fashion of our regular, early-morning chicken routine. The Famous Four bumble out of their house, down the dew-slippy ramp and go casually about their daily business, as if last night’s events were but a distant memory of a faded dream.

Then Simon moves to the door of the Big House. He jerks open the enormous, rusted bolts that hold the two sections of the decrepit barn-door securely shut against intruders, the clanging grinding of rough metal piercing the morning peace with a screech. He drags open the door, against the tide of loose soil and old straw that has collected up against it over time.  As his eyes slowly grow accustomed to the gloom, he becomes aware of the unmoving shape of Lonely, perched high in front of him, directly opposite the entrance. She twitches her head sideways and fixes him with a beady stare.

Simon casts a handful of grain into the darkness, and retreats. A few minutes pass, to the over-loud soundtrack of the nightingale warming up his vocal chords in the big oak tree behind the pen.

And then, with an almighty flutter-flap-crash, Lonely plummets from her bed-time perch to the floor of the Big House. The Famous Four stop in their bimbling tracks and look anxiously toward the origin of the ominous sound.

Lonely sidles out into the daylight. She surveys her morning kingdom, scratches behind one ear with a crooked-toed foot, lifts her pointy beak into the waiting air and clucks, raucously proclaiming her pre-eminence among the Poultry of Blanchetière.

To the untrained eye, the rest of the day would seem to pass in uneventful insignificance. But to anyone au fait with the subtle intricacies of poultry politics, it is clear that important goings-on are afoot.

Dirt is scratched, grass is pecked, bowls of left-over pasta are devoured, insects are chased, eggs are laid. But all this apparent normality carries on against a backdrop of social tension, as the Famous Four try to come to terms with their new situation. The pecking order is all awry. Positions are up for grabs. Opportunities exist. The management has changed and no-one knows what this means for them. Is this a chance for Pretty to show that she is more than a pretty face? Can Other emerge from the grey wastes of obscurity to make her mark. Will Big and Naughty fight it out for the Assistant Manager post?

By the end of the day, something strange has happened. The odd peck here, a little bustle there, a hoot here, a cackle there, and gradually the balance of power shifts. Pretty surprises everybody by standing her ground next to Lonely, and adopting a pose of passive but dogged resistance. Other emerges as everybody’s friend, happy to sit down and chat and eat with whoever happens to turn up at the table. Naughty keeps a watchful distance, neither challenging the new authority nor acceding to it. But Big…….

Big Chicken, erstwhile Leader of the Flock, Top Chicken and Oppressor of the Weak is more than a little ruffled. Lonely has evidently determined that Big presents the greatest challenge to her new authority, and has opted for a policy of zero tolerance. Big cannot so much as breathe near her, without Lonely interpreting the gesture as an insolent insubordination, to be mercilessly crushed without hesitation.

Oh, how the Mighty have fallen. Poor, big-bully, blustering Big. All that posturing and feather-fluffing counts for nothing. Nobody is impressed. Her Glory Days are well and truly over, and she is left, rather pathetically, pecking at the scraps that are left around the edge of the bowl when all the other chickens have had their fill. What will become of her?

Over the next week or so, Big Chicken spends a lot of time on her own, pondering her destiny. Maybe if she had been less of a tyrant, she might have benefited from a little loyalty from the flock. Maybe if she had not been so damn hen-sure of herself, she would have developed a more subtle range of social skills, and perhaps even a friendship. Who was she now? How did she fit in?

And to top it all, her Identity Crisis begins to screw with her hormones. Big Chicken – previously the Best Layer of the Biggest Eggs – slides into oviduct abjection. Her eggs get smaller, and fewer, and further between.

And at the end of each day, when Lonely has retired for another solitary night in the Big House, and the other fickle hens are safely installed in their customary sleeping positions in the Little House, Big can be seen wandering Chickenland alone  in the deepening dusk – her head down, her wings in her pockets, aimlessly kicking at loose stones, lost in reminiscences of glorious times past, and perhaps hopeful dreams of a better future.

More than two months have passed since the Famous Four had their First Contact with that oh-so-Alien hen, Lonely (Henfight at the OK Corral). It has been an eventful two months, for us and for the chickens. In fact it seems as if hardly a day goes by without some gossip-worthy incident occurring in Chickenland.

I have therefore decided to record these on-going ups and downs in written form, so that our fair readers may share a glimpse of the continuing soap opera that is The Life of Our Chickens.

So, for a while at least (i.e. until I lose interest)  there will be a series of episodic blogs, highlighting the everyday, unglamorous drama of Chickenland in a continuous open narrative.

Or something.