The next morning Louisa, Emily and myself go to Hen Pen garden to feed the chickens their daily 2 bowls of Petit Dejeuner. The chickens scramble to get to the best and tastiest morsels with the usual scrapping between the old and young chickens. It doesn't take me long before I realise that Madam Attitude is missing, we search everywhere under the clumps of grass, in the coups. Nowhere to be seen; I am getting fearful at this stage. Usually it is Madam Attitude that is first on the scene whenever food is about. They all know my voice now and respond quickly but not this time after calling for her several times. We look for holes or gaps in the fencing - the fencing is secure, we continue searching under the clumps of grass for hideaways but nothing. I am perplexed, her whereabouts is a mystery and start to think possibly a fox had taken her even though there is no obvious sign of a struggle or black feathers laying about...
Suddenly, Curry Man appears on the scene and says, "What's going on" a regular saying he used to give for the television soap Eastenders. I put two and two together and came up with DEATH. "Its you, isn't it, you killed Madam Attitude" I shout at him with pointed finger. "No", "now would I" Curry Man says calmly. "Come on" I continue, "time to put your hands up on this one, have you killed Attitude"? I am getting really angry and finding it difficult to stay calm. "No Darling" he says and turns and walks away, adding "I have a curry to sort out for tonight". Rilled by this last comment, I run after Curry Man and slap him on the shoulder with my saucer size hand. He's laughing at me and all I could say was "How could you, how could you, how could you"....
At some point Max slipped into Hen Pen garden un-noticed, he too is searching for Madam Attitude. I can see him kneeling down on the grass to the far corner of Hen Pen garden and suddenly he shouts "Over here Carol Irene" I really wish he would not call me that name, I mutter to myself and make a note that I really must tackle him on that later. "She is over here sitting on a large amount of eggs" he shouts out eagerly. "Excellent Max" and we all trundle over to see where she had been hiding. Madam Attitude had dug out a large hollow under a large clump of grass, it would be easy to miss her unless the grass was lifted or separated, the grass covered her completely. In fact she looked quite cosy. "See I told you so, I didn't kill her" says the indignant Curry Man. "OK, OK, I apologise for jumping to the wrong conclusion" I say feeling exasperated. Max gently coaxes Madam Attitude off the nest and we are astounded at how many eggs there are. Max, starts to count them, which is easy for him as he is an Accountant (just qualified). "Looks like 9 eggs, no 13, no 17, no no sorry there are 20 eggs altogether, that's simply amazing". We are all amazed at such a large quantity of eggs in one nest. "The eggs are all different shapes and sizes" Max continues and puts two and two together and reconciling the differences, states that "All the hens have been dumping their eggs in the one basket - boom boom".... Oh dear...Oh dear Max
No knowing how long the eggs had been sitting in the nest, we destroyed them all. Have you had a similar experience? if so just click on comment below, we would lover to hear about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment