Apparently the village of Invermay has some free-range chickens on the run and they are causing quite the stir. Motorists are having to slam on the brakes as chickens try to cross the road (and, no, we don’t know why); ball games are disrupted as participants stop to take photos of this unusual phenomena, and residents are having their precious morning sleep cut short by rousing wake-up calls.
To top it off, no one seems to know how many of these feathered jailbirds are on the loose and no one is claiming responsibility.
I chuckled when I read several Facebook posts about the recent shenanigans, and thought the entire situation was quite hilarious. That is, until my husband reminded me that I didn’t feel the same as I had when I had chicken issues many years ago.
When we first moved to the farm, I agreed to raise some chickens for butchering purposes, and keep a few laying hens so we could have a steady supply of fresh eggs (Some of you might remember an earlier article I wrote about how that went). This was working fine for a few years, even though the constant care required was wearing me down. But that all came to a head the summer when one particular bird kept getting out of the pen.
Every time that chicken managed to escape, my husband and I would check the fence, fix any potential problem spots, and think the matter was solved. But the next day there she’d be again, wandering about the yard and causing a disturbance. So we clipped her wings so she could no longer fly the coop, but still she managed to find a way out. It was baffling!
One day, I came home to find my entire front flower bed destroyed. Sad little sticks poking up through the soil where beautiful flowers had been was all that remained. I was ready to blame our dog when my husband pointed out that the soil had been scratched up and worked over until the dirt was very fine and mealy-looking. It was that runaway chicken!
The next day, when the young fellow who did odd jobs around our yard came out to the farm, I was waiting with a special assignment. As soon as I spied that annoying chicken outside the pen, I went to get the .22 calibre rifle and handed it to him.
“See that chicken over there?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he hesitantly replied.
“Well, make it disappear!” I ordered (Oh, go ahead and call PETA, all you animal lovers out there. That chicken was driving me crazy!).
That was the end of my chicken problems and, I might add, the last year we raised chickens at the farm. I am not advocating violence against chickens, but sometimes saving one’s sanity calls for drastic measures.
