BIRD TALK

The chickens were restless.

“It’s inevitable” Brendahen was brooding on her perch. Her brown feathers puffed up across her breast. “It’s coming whether we like it or not.”

“Don’t be such a clucking scare monger.” Paulinehen wasn’t having any of it. “Look what a flap you caused about Last Time.” All the others clucked noisily as if in agreement.

Brendahen looked ruffled. “Well Last Time was serious,” she said trying to win back some sympathy. “Last Time they stopped eating our eggs for months.” The shed went quiet. They’d all heard stories about the terrible cull. Brendahen continued. “We mustn’t forget what happened to our mothers.” The shed issued a collective cluck, an exclamation for the departed. Brendahen was winning them back.

“And our grandmothers and aunts. Don’t forget them. And sisters too. Some of us lost our sisters.” Bettyhen chirped up exaggerating the genocide. She was about to add cousins to her epitaph when she caught Paulinehen eyeing her up fiercely.

“Well I still think you’re worrying over nothing.” Paulinehen didn’t like the way things were going. She pecked at Bettyhen who scurried off into the crowd. Some chickens were so easily scared.

“This time will be far worse.” Brendahen made her pronouncement. “This time they’ll take us all out. We’ll all go.” The shed irrupted as though someone had mentioned Colonel Saunders.

“Rubbish!” shrieked Paulinehen above the din. “You don’t know what you’re clucking about. You’ll put us all off laying if you carry on like this.”

“I wish it was rubbish,” said Brendahen, “ But Rufuscock, who as we all know keeps his beak fairly close to the ground, heard things. He heard that it was inevitable.” The shed didn’t like the sound of Brendahen’s certainty. Uneasiness crept through the straw litter like the smell of a passing fox. Hens pecked nervously, twitched and jerked while others clawed at the ground; pretended to look for something or somewhere to hide.

“Well what did old dry balls hear exactly?” Paulinehen wanted chapter and verse; wanted the others back on her side. Several hundred beady eyes looked up.

“Pandemic.” Said Brendahen importantly.

“Pan what?” said Paulinehen.

“Demic,” said Brendahen.

“And what’s a pandemic when it’s at home?” asked Paulinehen in that singsong sarcastic way she sometimes used.

“Bird flew.” Said Brendahen.

“And worm crawled,” said Paulinehen. Some of the others laughed. The hen’s wit had eased the tension. Paulinehen was clever and the best flyer in the shed. She shook her wings as if to emphasise the point.

“How can flying cause a pan-what-you-may-call-it-demic?” She flustered some more and encouraged by the other hens, leapt from the perch and half gliding, half flapping tried to make it across the shed to a ledge next to the wired up window. Her flight was unsteady and the short trip never looked that confident. Paulinehen had been showing off. She had wanted to impress the others as she had once before. Her concentration this time wasn’t at its best and her frustration with Brendahen had taken it out of her. She collided with the metal pole that carried the overhead lighting, hit it hard and spiralled to the ground in an ungainly heap, landing in the scattering, noisy crowd with a broken wing and damaged left leg.

That evening when Jack did his rounds to shut them in for the night, he found the wounded hen lying on the straw covered floor. He picked it up roughly and wrung its neck by twisting the bird round and round violently as he grasped its head in his clenched fist. It was a casual act and something Jack didn’t bat an eyelid over.

His wife plucked and cooked the bird for them to eat and that was how the first case of bird flu came to Kent.