Two evenings ago Tony came in shaking his head and looking bemused.
"Wassup?" I asked.
"It's the chickens", he replied. "Or more accurately one of the cockerels". "You remember the brown cockerel I bred from the hen that Nikos gave me?" "Yes", I nodded, lying slightly as they all look the same to me.
"Well, it's gone. But now there's a young, scrawny little cockerel in there that I haven't seen before. I've got the right number of birds, I counted them carefully, but Big Brown has definitely disappeared."
Now, this is a bit strange as we have a 2 metre high fence around the entire chicken run, and the gate has a large padlock on it. There was no sign of a forced entry and the larger chickens are not capable of sufficient flight to get over the fence unaided.
After much debate and discussion we've come up with two theories about what happened. Either Big Brown was abducted by aliens, experimented on, and returned a shadow or his former self; or, just possibly, someone has come along and coaxed some of the chickens to the fence (which, being chain link is large enough to get a man's hand through). Coaxing the chooks isn't difficult because they're a nosey bunch and will always come to see if there's any extra grub on offer. Get a bird close enough to the fence and you could stick your hand through, grab it (probably by the neck) and then move it up the fence link by link until you could heave it over the top.
If this rather implausible theory is correct we must also presume that the 'thief' thought that by putting a replacement bird in the run he/she had either done the decent thing (fair exchange being no robbery), or that they would fool the Englishman who might know how many birds he has, but surely wouldn't notice the difference...
But then last night Jack went to take the dog back to the garden after their evening walk and noticed a pile of something just outside the chicken run. It was getting dark, but closer inspection revealed clutch of chickens that were, according to Jack, shivering and looking very sorry for themselves (how a chicken can express such emotion I have no idea but anyway!).
Jack's version of events is that there were 3 brown hens and one white bird that might have been a cockerel, sitting at the side of the fence. He picked the three hens up one at a time and put them back over the fence, but the white bird did take a bit of catching. He indicated the height of the birds that suggested these were full sized, not the nanies (bantams) that also live in the run.
Now, this was a bit odd for a number of reasons. The full sized birds, as I mentioned previously, can't get over the fence. The nanies are capable of gaining sufficient height to effect and escape, and occasionally one will do, but four....? Not so far.
It was also strange because the previous night one white nani cockerel had got out, and despite Jack and Tony's best efforts for nearly an hour they'd been unable to recapture it as it had hidden out in thick brambles on the far side of the run. Yet here's Jack saying he caught all 4 with very little trouble.
Tony got a torch and went down to investigate. Again there were two possible theories. Either the fence had been cut and the birds got out that way, or Jack was playing a trick on Tony. Half an hour and one rather angry father later the second option seemed more likely, although Jack was looking quite hurt at being accused of winding his dad up, and swearing blind that the chickens really had been out.
In the cold light of day we have come up with option 3. Perhaps, as with all the best fishermen, Jack's idea of "they were this big" was rather exaggerated, and in fact the birds were nanies. And perhaps, rather than there being 4 birds there were two, but Jack, in the dark, didn't manage to lob them over the fence properly first time, and thought he was capturing more when in fact he was recapturing the same one. Of course the number of birds could also have been a slight exaggeration on his part.
As for the truth? I suspect we'll never find out, but I'm keeping an eye out for flying saucers hovering low over the village in the night sky for a while...
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