The Husband pointed out, helpfully, that this was entirely my fault

I have a chicken called Dottie. Dottie is a speckled Hamburg, or part thereof. Dottie is very pretty. Dottie is also batshit crazy.

My other chickens are friendly. Supposedly boring, bulk standard Brown Shavers. They’re the friendliest bunch of critters one could ever come across. They see me coming and think, Excellent. The food lady. Dottie sees me coming and thinks, The murderer doth come to smite thee.

Dottie was a serial escape artist, disappearing from the run for days at a time. One day, Dottie disppeared and didn’t come back. Eventually, I concluded she’d gone to chicken heaven. I was a little bit sad. Dottie was pretty, and batshit crazy chickens can be forgiven when they suit the desired aesthetic.

Weeks went by. I adjusted to the absence of Dottie. And then I went down to the chicken run one day and who was there, waiting impatiently at the gate, but Dottie. She looked hungry, and a bit bedraggled.

“Dottie,” I said. “Where have you been?” She offered no explanation. No apology. She’d sent no postcard. As I admonished her total disregard for my mental wellbeing, I heard something. Cheep. I looked down. Cheep cheep. And out of the undergrowth came one tiny chick. Then another. And another. Six in total. Apparently, Dottie had not gone to chicken heaven after all. She’d had an affair with the Mighty Red Baron and then rushed off to the neighbour’s hedge to hide the consequences. Four daughters and two sons. She’d returned home only when the catering services afforded by the hedge had become manifestly inadequate.

It was now clearly the expectation that the welfare of her offspring fell to me.

The Husband pointed out, helpfully, that this was entirely my fault because I had, after all, acquired the Mighty Red Baron. There are consequences to one’s decisions, he reminded me.

The two boys were extremely handsome creatures, and I really didn’t fancy explaining to them that their father had failed to mention the whole what happens to surplus roosters situation. Fortunately, there is apparently an entire underground network of older vegan ladies who create rooster sanctuaries and now they’re off living their best life in a paddock somewhere in Waimate.

The four girls stayed. And, as it turns out, insanity is hereditary. They grew up. They discovered they could fly. And they discovered my new shrub borders. They developed a particular passion for scratching the woodchip mulch out of the borders and depositing it onto the paths.

Every.

Single.

Day.

I’d put them back in the run. They would escape. I’d put them back. They would escape. It became a daily ritual…chickens scattering mulch, me repatriating them, chickens laughing internally. Every day I thought, I must clip their wings. And every day I didn’t. This is pretty much my standard operating procedure. I have an impressive ability to formulate a perfectly sensible plan then never actually implement it.

Until one day. I finally snapped. This mulch situation was getting out of hand. I was going to clip their wings, that night, in the dark.

For the uninitiated, when a chicken thinks you’re the resident axe murderer, you can’t catch it during the day. They’re faster, more agile, and have the tactical awareness of a small military unit. My night plan was foolproof. Chickens sleep in their house at night. Sleeping chickens are easy to catch. Easy-to-catch chickens get their wings clipped.

Except these chickens had decided to go tree camping. Of course they had. Sensible chickens sleep in the chicken palace lovingly provided for them. Batshit crazy chickens sleep up tall trees. So, there I was, in the dark, staring up at four fluffy chicken bums. It was a deeply irritating night-time wildlife display. Naturally, The Husband wasn’t home. He’s an airline pilot. He’s never home when I need him. I could have got the ladder, but the prospect of going viral as “Local woman impales herself on plum tree while pursuing chickens in the dark” helped inform my decision to give up. The algorithm may reward that type of content, but it wasn’t the sort of viral fame I was after.

The chickens thought they’d won this battle of wits. But they clearly hadn’t encountered a gardener pissed off about mulch on her paths before.

As fate would have it, the very next day, the feeder ran out of food. “Useful” was my immediate thought. Chickens may be scatty, but they’re still chickens. And hungry chickens are desperate chickens.

So, I devised a plan of staggering brilliance. A masterplan if you will. The kind of plan you come up with when you’ve exhausted all the sensible options. I filled the feeder and hid in the chicken house. For quite a long time as it turned out. Friendly chickens surged forth, scrapping over the food as if it had been days rather than hours since the last time food had crossed their chicken lips. But the batshit crazy chickens? Turns out, they’re quite savvy. “We know what you’re up to lady. We might be crazy, but we’re not stupid”.

And so, it became a battle of wills. Who could outwit, outlast, and outplay? It was game on. To be fair, gardeners with mulch on the path issues are highly motivated gardeners. And fortunately, hanging about in a chook palace with its accompanying pink chandelier and wall art wasn’t the worst place to spend a considerable period of time.

Eventually, the lure of food got the better of them. One by one, they came in. They approached the food. And then I pounced.

Clip.

Next one.

Clip.

Next one.

Clip.

Eventually, all four wings were clipped. I had won.

I was extraordinarily pleased with myself. I’d outsmarted four chickens. This was, frankly, one of my finer achievements in life and something I felt rather smug about.

The next day, The Husband came home. We decided to go for a walk. I told him in a very self-congratulatory tone how I’d finally conquered the chickens. How I’d outsmarted these critters with brains the size of walnuts. How I’d clipped their wings. How the shrub borders were now safe and my paths would now be free of mulch.

He listened. Then he said: “Why is that chicken standing on the roof of the berry cage then?”

I looked. There she was on top of the berry cage. The little bugger. She jumped down and walked straight towards the shrub borders. I said nothing. The Husband said nothing. The chicken said nothing. But I think we all knew who had won.

So, dear readers, the lesson is this:

Never celebrate too early.

Especially when your opponent is a chicken. Because the minute you think you’ve won, karma will bite you in the arse. Or, in my case, she’ll scratch your mulch onto the path.

Again.

Did you know?

Some peonies, particularly the coral peonies, have a rather unusual trick up their sleeve: they can grow from a piece of root without an eye (bud). This is called adventitious bud formation, where a new bud develops from tissue that wouldn’t normally produce one. It’s one of the reasons coral peonies can be surprisingly easy to propagate from root cuttings - and why a tiny piece of root left behind in the soil can sometimes turn into a whole new plant.

While may peonies can be divas and take time to establish, sulking for a year or three if you move them, I’ve found my corals to be the complete opposite. Even a small amount of root left in the ground after transplanting the main root system elsewhere kicks off another plant. Within a fairly short time (measured in peony time) it’s getting well established as another plant. Last year I moved what I thought was the entire root system of a coral to a new location. This spring, about six new individual plants have sprung up…right where I don’t want them anymore! Who thought a peony could become a bit of a weed?

What’s new on Behind the Garden Gate?

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