Hide and Beak

How The Black Chicken escapes and leaves her friends behind is a mystery!

I may have mentioned how hellbent on escape my Houdini hens are. From time to time The Black Chicken uses her connection to the dark powers of the Sith to materialise wherever she chooses, so that she can give me a Death Stare and make me jump out of my skin. No one knows how she does this.

Sometimes there is a mass jail break, when even Chicktoria overcomes her dizzy panic and becomes a team player. They soar over the enclosure fence in formation, a little like the red arrows display team, but only if the pilots were having a really really bad day. Once they have landed – and they appear to fall out of the sky rather than achieve anything very graceful – they need to form a plan for what to do next. This requires some clucking and strutting about a bit, with perhaps a ruffle of the wing feathers in order to compose themselves. It becomes apparent that no one has a plan, so there is more aimless strutting. Then Henbley, who is small and clever, will come up with a scheme. Now, Henbley is not the leader of the pack. When is comes to meting out peremptory punishment and keeping everyone in order, The Black Chicken is happy to oblige. She rather revels in the role of dictator. Second-in-command, Chicktoria uses her fluffy bulk to shoulder her way into the prime position for corn on the cob pecking, and Hattie’s way of dealing with most situations is to walk in a startled and clueless circle. Henbley on the other hand is full of ideas.

The chickens attempt to enter the house but the border guards are out in force and they are returned to the garden.

Sometimes her idea is ‘let’s try to get in the house’. She knows the mealworms live there.

Henbley checking the coast is clear (it’s not).

Sometimes Henbley is on a solo mission. If I’m lucky I spot her before she rampages through the flowerbed. My view from the kitchen window often includes a small brown chicken who isn’t where she’s meant to be…

But a few months ago Henbley excelled herself by getting her own mention on our local community Facebook page. I’ve included a ‘screen grab’ below. She made it out of the garden, down the drive and onto the street, where she had a rare old time exploring the wide grass verge and causing great alarm amongst my lovely neighbours. One of them posted an appeal to find the owner of this errant chicken, while others tried to usher her into a safer location. I was out at the time. At some point my electrician, who was passing, came across the scene and sent me a text message – I have no idea how he knew that Henbley was mine – and I hastened home from my trip to town, expecting to find a disaster. Actually, Henbley was none the worse for her adventure, in fact I think she was rather pleased with herself.