The Good Life
In the ongoing war of man versus fowl, the feathered fiends have the edge.
There is no understanding a chicken’s mind. They live in a world in which the food another chicken has is always better and should therefore be stolen immediately, even when it’s exactly the same food. Chickens are birdbrains.
Still, our chooks, the Four Hens of the Apocalypse, have been particularly bonkers since the coop was given its endof-summer clean.
This is a task that takes two days and is a trial for them and us. On the first day – you have to pick a hot one, which is not difficult at the moment – you clean out the “deep litter”, which is a thick layer of wood shavings that lines the bottom of the coop. Then you wash the coop and laying boxes with a waterblaster and leave them to dry in the afternoon heat. The next day, you spray around a sanitiser, let that dry, spray an insecticide, let that dry, before finally adding a thick new layer of wood shavings and inviting your feathered friends back in to appreciate all that you’ve done for them.
The birdbrains in turn, and without fail, will treat their freshly cleaned home with the sort of beady-eyed suspicion Winston Peters reserves for anyone with a press card. The routine begins with one of them walking up the coop’s ramp, poking her head in, eyeing the freshly cleaned coop, and running off as if she’s seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The four will then talk among themselves and agree that you’ve ruined their home. Then, in the coming days and again without fail, they will refuse to lay their eggs in the freshly cleaned laying boxes.
In the week following a big clean, they spend their free-ranging time – between 4pm and sunset in summer – finding secret places in the garden to lay eggs, before emerging to prance about the lawn making extra-loud post-lay bragging calls to tell us “we’ve laid one and you have no hope of finding it”.
How to get back on their good side? I decided to give them something they’ve been mithering about for months and months: a dust bath in their run. I wheeled an old tractor tyre in and filled it with three bags of fine topsoil. The Four Hens of the Apocalypse were into it before I’d finished the job, which at least meant a job well done.
But the dirt cost $40. Who, I wondered, as they flung the world’s most expensive soil all over the place, is the real birdbrain here?
Ihave been dreaming of winter. This always happens as summer’s end approaches. I tire of the season’s sweaty embrace. I long for the snap and sting of a proper southerly, for long nights and lighting the fire.
Winter reminds me of childhood. Growing up in Invercargill in the 1960s and 70s was like growing up in Narnia – well, without the White Witch, Aslan and Mr Tumnus, and with not nearly as much snow. So, not much like Narnia, but it did always seem to be winter (though we did get a Christmas).
Winters then meant the thrill of breaking icy puddles on the way to school, coal fires, electric blankets, hogget roasts on Sundays and bed sheets freezing on the line. It meant staying inside all weekend, watching the likes of The High Chaparral, Planet of the Apes and Kung Fu on the black and white or making Airfix models at the kitchen table. It meant heavy rain and hard frosts and woolly jumpers.
Winters at Lush Places aren’t much different, which is a cool breeze of a thought as I stack firewood in the heat of late summer.
The hens treat their freshly cleaned home with the sort of suspicion Winston Peters reserves for anyone with a press card.