chicken terror

Off list-topic, I know, but I hope sympathetic chicken owners in the
group will sympathise with my need to vent my feelings...

Murder most foul took place in the hen pen this week. When I arrived on 
Monday morning  all was very silent as survivors huddled together, amid
massed feathers and butchered birds. The dead fowl,  five chickens and
one guinea hen, were neatly cached in a corner of the pen whilst the
living paced manically amid blood splattered dirt and partially eaten
carcasses. 

That night I locked some very nervous birds up in their box with a
makeshift door. I shone the torch into the holm oak forest on the other
side of the fence and I picked out two bright eyes which stared back,
unblinkingly, almost challenging. Something was obviously impatient to
revisit the pen. The stand-off continued as we just looked at each other
without moving for a full ten minutes or so. Eventually I lugged a rock
over the fence and clapped my hands and the eyes duly disappeared. I
left with a great sense of guilt.

The birds have now survived three nights in a row. The first no doubt
thanks to my imposed lock-up and last two  due entirely  to their own
common sense. I  deliberately leave the pen open now as we obviously had
differing opinions as to just what constitutes a safe resting place. The
chickens while away the hours of darkness high up a juniper at the
bottom of the garden, as far away as possible from the scene of the
killings. I am trying to conjure up a long term solution but in the
meantime I have little option but to allow this deadly game of hide and
seek to continue. I do feel for those chickens though, especially at
night. In the wild I expect that is just the way the cookie crumbles:
Dawn for a bird is just another temporary stay of execution.

Damian Martin
Talavera, Central Spain
(Mediterranean "dehesa" land, home to genets, polecats, wild cats and
many other members of the chicken appreciation society).
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