An extract from NO LEGS, TWO LEGS, CLAWS AND PAWS by Juliet Frazer Jones.

A Fowl Introduction

A long time ago on some land far away from the coastline lived lots of animals, birds and reptiles all interacting with each other just the way nature designed. Some days were extremely dull and boring and others there was births, hatchings and even death. 

A typical farming property in western regions of Australia will have: sheep and/or cattle, pigs, chooks, working dogs, the odd goose, horses, and various animals birds and reptiles, regarded as “native fauna. On this particular property there was also a wonderful family of humans who never realised just how their interactions with the local creatures was sometime out of their control.

Home Sweet Chook Yard

The Chook Yard was a large square area fenced by wire netting some 4 meters high. In the middle of the yard was a pond, well it looked like a pond and was topped up from time to time with water by the metal pipe that lay as far as the chooks could see. Well chooks cannot see too far but the pipe went way down past the human’s house. Except for the occasional raindrop, the water was straight from the artesian bore that kept all things alive. Approximately a third of the pond contained tall straight shoots of bamboo. 

The wet season was upon the region so the pond and all the local swamps and watering holes were as full as they could possibly be. The chook yard itself looked more like the pig sty next door then its usual dry dirty smelly dustbowl.

To one corner of the yard was row upon row of nesting boxes all up on stilts to help deter rodents and snakes from stealing the eggs and young chicks. There were a few trees in the yard, nothing too startling but they did provide a small amount of shade. Chook pooh might be good for gardens but it did nothing to assist the flora in this particular spot. The Chook Yard had been in existence for decades and was a well-established and respected compound by all who visited or lived in it

However, there were the usual problems with maintenance and general wear and tear and these problems let in the bush rats and snakes and occasional foxes that would wreak havoc on the chooks and send them into days of stupor. Post-traumatic stress would be rife through the population for the generation of parents whose eggs were stolen or hatchlings chick napped and never to be seen again. It goes without saying that the rodents, snakes and marauding foxes held the yard in most high esteem.

The population of chooks was from time to time forced to cohabitate with geese that the humans had decided to acquire. These times of inter-poultry relations had their good and bad side. 

The bad side was that the geese were bigger than the chooks and made far much louder noise. The noise was just like an alarm system for the carnivorous creatures lurking in the area. They would start to drip saliva from their mouths upon hearing the screeching and cackling arising from the chook yard.

Anytime a fox entered the yard mysteriously, the geese would flap their wings and stretch their necks out to fight off the fiend.  The geese were gifted with very good flight and fight responses and could pick and choose the response they felt like using. The chooks did not have big wings and hardly any neck to stick out. The chooks necks were just long enough for a fox’s mouth to grab on to. Sad but true. That’s Mother Nature for you. Accept. Sigh.

And of course as the geese were bigger with longer necks, this also meant that the food became harder to peck as the geese usually got in first. The geese also believed that the chooks were not as important and therefore were further down the pecking order.

As for the good times, well, come now dear reader, did you really believe there were any for a chook? Okay, read on, perhaps there is.

Fortunately, the geese did not reside permanently in the chook yard and this was often put down to the fact that try as they might, they never could lay any golden eggs. The chooks believed that any goose that could not lay a golden egg was as worthless as well, not their weight in gold. Of course no one ever thought about the fact that the chooks never laid golden eggs either! Truth be told, the geese gave the humans too much trouble and so were given away to other farmers.

The local humans regularly threw leftovers into the yard as a special treat for the residents. There was much feasting on the days after the mailman came or the family had taken a trip to a rural commercial outpost. Once the mailman had been the stores of stale bread, vegetables and the like could be cleaned out.  For the rest of the time, the chooks, and noisy geese were supplied with grain.

We Are Already Here

The sharing of the grain was a strange ritual carried out by the humans. They would descend on the yard either alone or with junior humans in toe and toss handfuls of corn, maize, whatever the heck, whilst calling out “Here chook chook chook. Here chook.” The chooks never stopped being amazed at the stupidness of the humans. The chooks were already there and it was not as if the humans actually handed the grain personally to them. But chooks being chooks, they gladly put up with the oddities of life and pecked up the food without any encouragement required. 

Occasionally a human would get in the way of the chooks. This was a most frightening experience as the chook would usually end up getting kicked or shoved away. Rather rude of the humans, it was after all not their private residence. 

The chook  yard on this particular property had three little chooks. Dotty, Spotty and Gert.  Dotty and Spotty where sisters, with Dotty hatching the day before Spotty. However Gert was the oldest because she hatched a whole week earlier than that. And as is the case in many Chook Yards, Gert was Dotty and Spotty’s half-sister. 

Dotty, Spotty and Gert were still reasonably young when this story was made up. Yes, dear reader, this is fiction. 

All three of the chooks were under the ever watchful eye of Aunty Agnes. She was called Aunty Agnes, because in a Chook Yard it is not practical or wise to keep track of who was your actual mother or father. No one wants to get into the grey area in terms of cross breeding. No, it just didn’t sound right to call a fellow chook Mum when her eggs were hatching chickens at the same time yours were.

Added to this was the fact that no one, not even Aunty Agnes herself could remember the last time she laid an egg much less one that eventually had a chicken hatch from it. The days of Aunty Agnes being a mother had long passed.

Aunty Agnes was a harmless old chook that had managed to survive many generations. She somehow was always out of sight whenever trouble was around and some poor cohabiter met an unpleasant end or simply went off with the humans to “secret human business”. Amongst all of Aunty’s oddities, she managed very well to stay under the radar so to speak. 

Aunty Agnes ran the yards dance and singing studio and was the local Agony Aunt. But, dear reader, I will get back to Aunty Agnes and her part in this story later.

The key in this story is to have patience and acceptance. You can’t rush a good bit of  poppycock and you will just have to accept that.

Pixabay

Pixabay

Pixabay

Pixabay