Free Range Chickster

PECKING ORDER

 I know half of you probably think I’m making all this up - lurching round Dunedin in the snow and meeting rats in Clinton. But some of it is so surreal even I think it could be made up. This little getting out of your comfort zone game has now reached new levels. I’m spending two weeks in Wanaka looking after a big house, huge grounds and a whole heap of animals.

Those of you who actually know me, know that I was brought up in the city and have had a very urban life. I’m not too good at “country” and can’t quite understand how you are meant to feed and entertain yourself out there with no shops and restaurants or lattes and film festivals. Plus animals everywhere, dropping shit all over the place and having to be fed and kept in their places all the time. And surely the last thing a horse wants is somebody’s fat bum banging up and down on it’s spine? But I am well aware that if I know what’s good for me, I should keep quiet about such reckless heresy. So you do have to ask yourself how it is that I have ended up in charge of a whole bunch of animals, including a whole bunch of spirited chooks.

And it turns out I love those silly chooks, after all as the Free Range Chickster, I’m part of the tribe. They are fascinating to observe, they run around together all fighting for best spot (pecking order indeed), but then there is always that one who doesn’t do what the others are doing. Making a break for it, lurking with intent by the gate or strolling off while the others are fighting for food as though all that jostling for position is not for her and instead just ends up sitting around in the dust. Maybe they know who I am.

Is this my adventure taken to stellar levels? Or just a quiet place to write, with a few lovely friendly and well-behaved pets to keep me company? I prefer the second option.

It is extraordinary here. The Central Otago landscape inspirational, so ruggedly beautiful and I just keep on avoiding all those weather bombs. And it’s wonderful to have enthusiastic and ever-energetic dogs to walk with. And the air, the clear pure air!

Here’s a fun little chook poem. L xxx

 Boiled Eggs

 I am in sole charge of feeding the chooks.

I go outside where they cluck and fuss around the gate.

There are ten.

They are golden and staunch and upright.

They walk with high steps and hold their little heads high.

Their chunky chickeny bodies and knowing fixed eyes

looking for the next food option.

Busy, they don’t care about me,

I am the feeding machine.

A large dark shape that activates the feeder box.

I give them left-over apple and pumpkin

They peck at it like anything and jostle each other out of the way.

When I lift the lid of the egg-laying box,

there are the eggs and it’s a surprise.

They are so perfectly shaped, so perfectly placed there,

a secret present.

Pale and delicate in the slushy shitty pecked-over shed.

I gather them into my basket but I feel like a sneak thief.

There are far too many

How can I eat twelve eggs?

I am cooking two on the stove,

water busily boiling in the tiny saucepan.

But didn’t I just feed them? the chooks, the parents

Now I’m going to eat their unborn babies,

How did this happen?

There is something wrong here.