A post inspired by a thread on Facebook

Once upon a time, I lived in a house in the country with a substantial garden. When we (as in ex-husband and I) bought the house, it came with three chickens.

They were delightful. Pecking around the garden etc, laying eggs wherever they felt like it - hedgerows, mostly. In places you'd never think to look. When it was feeding time, they'd tuck up their skirts and hurtle towards you going 'tuk tuk tuk' and make you feel utterly indispensable.

(Then they got the hang of it and started waiting just outside the back door, cr*pping everywhere . . .)

They were so delightful, we bought six more from a farmer just up the road. Ex-husband made them all a henhouse, complete with private egg-laying spaces (he had his uses). He even constructed a run for them so they could be enclosed and not eat the vegetables he was about to plant. It was a very big run, surrounded by a fence about a metre high (made of chicken wire, obviously).

The book said that, in order to get new chickens used to said henhouse, they'd have to be shut in for a couple of days. Then we could let them out to roam until, at nightfall, they'd have to be shepherded back in order to roost. Roosting is important. They do it high up, so's to be safe from foxes.

Okay.

So we have fully fitted henhouse, in which we have shut six new chickens plus food and water. In due course, we let them out.

Come the newcomers' first evening of freedom, the old chickens tuck themselves into the new henhouse without even being invited. They tuk tuk contentedly to themselves and each other when we go and check them before we go out for a drink.

(It is summertime, so we reckon it's safe to go out for a while. We will be back by when it gets dark, in good time to make sure that the newcomers are safely rounded up and shut in.)

We get back. We check the henhouse. 'Tuk tuk' go the old chickens. There is no sign of the new ones.

Ex-husband and the friend we've gone out for the drink with and I comb the hedgerows for them. This takes quite a long time as the hedges are bushy and the garden amounts to about two acres.

I tire of this after a while and decide to go back to the house and put the kettle on. The chaps refuse to be beaten by six chickens and continue to search for them.

I put the kettle on, and the outside light, and have another glass of red.

I am sitting having this glass of red when I notice that the silhouette of the age-old apple tree about three metres away from the back door has changed.

It has acquired blobs where no blobs used to be.

I creep across the patio. I discover that the blobs are the new chickens, roosting. High up.

I call the chaps who, by this time, are quite a long way away. I point out the new chickens.

Ladders become involved. Limbs are risked.

Eventually the new chickens are reintroduced to their henhouse. Ooof.

The following morning, they have their wings clipped.