As i pull up to the house, i can see Yvette standing on top of the chicken house. she is doing her impersonation of a weather vane - all be it a weather vane with attitude. she is debating whether to jump. she has to make this decision at least once a day and yet every time the angst is obvious.
of course, she should not be able to get onto the roof in the first place. according to all of the smallholding bibles that we possess, clipping the flight feathers on one wing will render your chicken flightless, grounded and completely disorientated should they give take-off a go. well, no-one showed that particular paragraph to Yvette. mind you, it is not all wing power that gets her to the point 5 foot above ground. another thing missing from 'everything you need to know about poultry' was the fact that some chickens have legs that an Olympic high jumper would give his eye teeth for. Yvette is such a chicken. with no runup and no apparent effort she leaps skywards and lands neatly on the roof of 'number 10'. (10 house - get it? you will if you come from up north)
being on the roof is not a reason for consternation for Yvette. far more taxing for a chicken of little brain but capable thighs is whether to take the leap over the 6ft wire netting that is supposed to keep her and her 27 mates safe from predatory things, like sharp toothed foxes or out of control gun dogs. she can see the advantages from her birds-eye outpost. the freshly dug seed beds in the vegetable garden, the dry, dusty earth beneath the conifers (so good for bathing), the endless possibilities of the carefully displayed gravel by the rather inviting flower beds and the general greenness on the other side of the fence. her mates are of no help when it comes to decision making. being either too small or too heavy (on a diet that includes chocolate swiss roll this is only to be expected) to make the top of the house a place on their 'must visit soon' list, they merely watch with half an eye to check on todays antics.
should Yvette take that leap, flapping with a kind of lop-sided elegance, she may well land in the forbidden territory of the veg garden. more likely, however, is that she will make it over the 6ft wire and land smack bang within the confines of the outer enclosure - a snazzy safety fence of bright orange plastic with yellow uprights. this fence is electrified! well, at least it is supposed to be. it has a warning sign that tells passing dog walkers that it is dangerous, but anyone watching for even 10 minutes would not be fooled. the chickens constantly give the game away by putting their heads (and even their whole bodies in the case of the bantoms) through the holes in order to get at the grass on the other side. astute people would hence hazzard a guess that 1) the fence is not 'on' and 2) the chickens are so undernourished that they are prepared to risk electrocution in order to access a blade of grass.
back to Yvette. having watched her prevaricate for a few minutes i think of 101 things i should be doing, and start to unload the car. self-congratulatory squawking confirms that Yvette has leapt the right way and now has free range of the garden. she is off like a sprinter on those well muscled legs. the remaining girls are horrified and not a bit impressed. they set up an awful row. telling me how unfair it is, insisting that i either bring her back right now or, preferably, let them out too so that they can check she doesn't get up to mischief. i take pity on them and undo the gate so that they can maraude all over the 'patch'. as usual they are like prisoners released from extended confinement. every veg bed gets a cursory peck and scratch until the whole garden has had the once over. then it is down to the serious and systematic destruction of the order that once was my garden................
