exercising the chickens

The big tabby has come to sit with me while I type this.  He is purring enthusiastically, even though there's no food in the offing, which is rather endearing, and dribbling on the end of my laptop, which is rather less so.  I wonder if Ernest Hemingway's cats dribbled on his typewriter, or whether Dr Johnson's dictionary was spattered with Hodge's spit, while it was still a work in progress?

The Systems Administrator has gone to London for a retirement party, so I thought I'd better take responsibility for letting the chickens out.  The SA discovered how one of the new little hens was escaping up towards the bonfire heap after seeing her walk away from the chicken gate,turn, run towards it, and flapping madly fly over the top.  Apparently it was straight out of Chicken Run.  We are hoping that as they got older and fatter they will forget about flying, but in the meantime have to prop a motley collection of bamboo canes above the gate to raise the bar.  These are very inconvenient if you need to go up to the bonfire heap to empty a bin of prunings.  I tried going through the SA's workshop, but that is not very convenient either, as the various benches aren't laid out on the assumption that you are going to want to walk through it carrying a large bin with twigs sticking out of it.

Today the speckledies didn't try to wander off, but hid in the sage bush in the herb bed.  I found it vaguely worrying to look up from cutting back the santolina and not be able to see them, and had to go and check that they were all right every so often.  The SA tells me that one is definitely the leader, and squawks occasionally, so if I think I've lost them I just have to listen for the squawk, and when I've found one I'll find all.  This afternoon they were notably silent.

The rooster and the old lady hen went to scratch around on the daffodil lawn, which was no good to me as it is the other side of the eleagnus hedge, and if I can't see them then the fox can't see me.  Fortunately they can recognise the Value sultanas bag (actually, there is nothing fortunate about it, as the SA has trained them by waving the bag around prominently when feeding them) and were agreeable to being bribed to come back into the front garden.  They still don't flock with the tinies, though.  The rooster once or twice has had a vaguely interested expression, as if he realised that they were going to turn into ladies, but they are still quite small, so it is just as well that he hasn't discovered his inner Humbert Humbert.  The old lady hen seems jealous of the rooster's incipient interest, which is odd, when she doesn't seem to like sex, but no different to some people.

Altogether it is quite hard work exercising the chickens, and really taking a dog for a walk would be more straightforward, at least if you kept it on a lead.  I don't know how the SA manages to remain so calm and get through so much of the sinking of the Tirpitz while on chicken patrol.  I must be more paranoid.  We haven't lost one on the SA's watch yet, so it would be awful if the morning after the retirement party I had to confess that I'd gone and mislaid one of the speckledies.