The Chicken Story

The first two that hatched successfully made a mess of Brendon’s car. When he realised that the chickens could not survive in the boot alone, he folded down one of the rear seats to give them more room and even jammed a broom handle between the rear doors to serve as a roost. A pile of dried grass behind the drivers seat served as the nest box. Two front door windows were left lowered by a few centimeters to provide air circulation. Not enough for a chicken to squeeze through.

“Only four more weeks and we will have eggs” chortled Brendon. He had originally thought that fresh eggs would be an immediate by product of the hatching. “Of course they will need to get a little bigger, but these birds grow fast.” Chickens normally start to lay eggs at 18 weeks of age.

It was the one very large egg supplied by his Gypsy lady early in the process that caused all of the chaos. It had certainly hatched and there was the cracked open egg shell to prove it, but there was no chicken in sight. It was twelve weeks later that one of the new chicks disappeared. There was no way possible for it to escape. It just wasn’t there anymore. A week later, the hen was gone.

“There is thief at work here and I intend to catch the mongrel and extract the value of those birds from him!” Brendan was furious at the thought that someone could stoop so low as to bugger up his plans by nicking his chickens.

Then a neighbours new pet kitten vanished. “We appreciate that you young men are struggling to survive while attending your university, but enough is enough. The chickens must GO!” What the chickens could have to do with his lost kitten was beyond our comprehension, but he and his wife were adamant.

The great chicken caper was over. I helped dump the remainder of the chicks at the same tip their mother hen had come from. We then proceeded to clean out the car.

“Woof, they certainly didn’t look all that dirty, but the smell is grossly indecent.” Brendon grabbed the top of the seat that he had lowered and pulled it upright. There, curled up on the rear seat was the chicken thief.

It didn’t take a great deal of intellect to track back to the mystery of the large egg that hadn’t produced a chick. Brendon’s Gypsy had palmed off a snake egg when she had no further chickens to sell. The beast was now over a metre long and lay contentedly with a huge bulge in it’s stomach where the cat was slowly being digested.

“Remember my plan to duff a cow?” queried Brendan.