Just along the road from here there are five old ladies who share a house together. Generally they seem to get along pretty well but sometimes, when I’m out for my walks, I can hear them squabbling from the road and wonder what’s caused them to kick off this time.
I remind myself that for oldies, lockdown hits harder than for the rest of us and I guess that however close your relationship may be to your housemates, the anxiety and sheer boredom of recent months must sometimes cause feathers to fly.
They can’t even go outdoors for exercise, these five, as the risk of catching and spreading the virus is too great for them. For these five birds are my neighbours’ wonderfully looked-after hens and unless you are a poultry farmer or, indeed, an actual hen, it may have slipped under your radar that there’s an Avian Flu pandemic going on and poultry must be kept indoors until further notice.
No exceptions. No lawn-scritching, no worm-worrying, no compost-bin rootling, no essential travel, even for shopping – less Co-op, more coop. Welcome to Cluckdown.
Cosy coop
I often hen-sit when our neighbours are away, as they were for a week in December and I got to see first-hand the misery and deprivation of the chooks’ forced incarceration. Or so I thought. Normally, their digs comprise a cosy straw-lined coop in a lush, sheltered field with food, water, perches and laying-boxes, so when I showed up to receive my instructions for the December week, I got quite a shock.
Sheila and Graham had flitted them into what I can only describe as a luxury barn conversion, complete with their original coop, acres of warm, dry straw, timed lighting, a strong tarpaulin wall to keep the weather out and let the light in during the day, secure bolted doors for night-time and freshly-pulled asparagus fronds from their garden to give them some variety from their usual corn and pellets.
I love hen-sitting. It’s not just the warm eggs, which are glorious, generously laid by the hens and given to us by our neighbours. It’s the torchlit walks along the road at dusk to put them to bed, gingerly lifting the coop lid to shine the torch in and do a head count, receiving muffled grumbles in response, before bolting the hatch to keep out predators.
“So chickeny”
It’s the fun in the mornings of watching them tumble out and feeling them peck hopefully at my bootlaces, in case they might be worms. It’s the memories, too. Like the time my son nervously picked one up to rescue it from a tight spot, murmuring in surprise, ‘ooh, you feel so chickeny’. And the downsides – the horror when I woke at 3am realising I’d forgotten to lock them in and sprinted along the moonlit road in my dressing gown only to find them – no thanks to me – safe and well.
As far as expectations go during the Avian Flu outbreak, the hens’ dials have been reset to zero. All they have to do for the duration of their pandemic is to Be A Hen. Eat. Drink. Preen. Take Naps. Try not to fight. Stay Alive. Lay an egg if you feel like it but no pressure. Graham warned me that the hens might stop laying in response to their new situation. Quite right, I say, there’s a pandemic on; if you’re not feeling it – don’t do it.
Not for these gals the expectation to carry on as normal. They’re not lying awake at night trying to fight off their low-grade anxiety with mindful meditation in order to try and get more stuff accomplished the next day. They don’t feel compelled to get to work on their summer bodies or make a start on that novel they’d always planned to peck away at some day. They just have to be a hen.
Joyful squawking
My neighbours understand this. They will blush when they read this but their hens’ cluckdown is managed with such love and care, to ensure that the birds have the least miserable incarceration possible and to see that when the curfew is finally lifted, the hens will return to their version of normality, with no-one missing.
I hope when that day comes, Sheila and Graham will take some slow-motion footage of the release. I want to see all five bursting out, leaping into the air and squawking joyfully, to the thundering background of some epic movie soundtrack. It’ll be the boost, and the example, we didn’t realise we needed.
Erica Munro is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and freelance editor