The Chickens
“They are back, Mark!”
The cry came early one morning, from downstairs, high-pitched. Kate was in the kitchen, probably preparing breakfast. He knew immediately what she meant by “they” — the chickens, the blasted chickens, five of them, two white and three brown. Again and again — they had tried everything to keep them out, and now the chickens were back in the garden. They had talked to their neighbours, not just once but several times, many, many times. They had put up fences, had repaired fences, had cut down hedges and put up more fences. Admitted, the garden looked much more beautiful with the willow fence and the climbers, but the chickens still managed to find their way into the garden, somewhere they knew they could get in. Kate and Mark had been all over the enormous space, checked everything over and over again, but the chickens kept coming. And all of Kate’s precious seeds kept disappearing down the throats of the insatiable feathered beasts.
They had longed to settle down here, in peace and quiet. They had been through so much, had fought their way to this place, to be together, at last, and now it was all being ruined by five eager, hungry, prospecting, scraping and digging chickens.
Mark and Kate had met seven years earlier, both of them in careers in different countries and both of them living with their respective families, with spouses and children. They just knew that they had to be together, but at the time they could not face the upheaval. They met at a conference, had spent an evening together, said a chaste good-night and had gone their separate ways the following day, both of them fully aware that they would probably never see each other again. In the days, weeks and months which followed their worlds changed, but none of them dared contact the other to see if it were the same for him or for her. And then they met again, by chance, in a hotel in Brussels. Kate was waiting for the shuttle to the airport when Mark walked in with two colleagues — they talked for five minutes, that was all it took, the shuttle arrived and they separated once again, but this time they both knew that it was only a question of time before they would be together, and this time it would be for good.
It would be a long time before this could happen, though. For more than a year they went through the painful and exhausting process of obtaining separations and, eventually, divorces. Their children were incredibly understanding, Kate’s in any case, but then they were in their late teens and already had their own lives. They only needed reassurance that they could stay in the family home, and their father agreed to keep the house. There was a lot of crying, though, but Kate was adamant. She and Mark would not take over one of the houses where one or the other had lived earlier, they needed to create their own home, somewhere not too far from either of their work bases.
Mark’s divorce was not smooth, to say the least. He knew why he hated the chickens so much. It was not the precious seeds they ate although he knew that this hurt Kate the most. It was the constant pecking and scraping, the relentless move towards selfish goals — something had to be done about the ghastly birds. He turned over, knew he could stay in bed for at least another hour, but he could not go back to sleep, kept thinking about all those long, harrowing months of his divorce. His wife would hear nothing of a divorce, and when she realised that he would obtain his divorce regardless of her opposition and that eventually, it would be a simple matter of time she began her crusade to bleed him dry. He knew that he had given in, in spite of the injustice of it, and he knew why. He just wanted out and had suddenly realised that this was what he had wanted for years. It took Kate to make him see this, and no matter how gruelling it had all been, he was infinitely grateful to have escaped almost unscathed.
What pained him was the relationship to his boys which had been more than tested by the long process. He knew that he would be able to establish good relations to them later on, but they were still in their early teens. They had sided with their mother, had refused to talk to him and there was never any doubt that she would obtain custody. The boys were old enough to be questioned by the judge as to their preferences and both had been unequivocal. He knew from his good friend, Karen, who had been his solicitor throughout the process that children normally side with the weaker part in divorce cases, but it still hurt.
And then he suddenly sat up, remembering the situation which made him hope that one day he could re-establish his relationship with the boys, and he laughed out loud and called out to Kate. Now he knew how they could rid themselves of the constant irritation over the chickens.
There was coffee and tea ready, fresh bread was baking in the oven, the kitchen was warm and cosy and everything would be fine, Mark thought. She looked at him in surprise.
“What is so funny?” she asked. “The chickens are out there again, every single one of them and you just settle down for breakfast with a grin. Anything you would like to share?”
He smiled back and began to tell the story about the cats, his lovely cats. One of them had arrived when a colleague left to take up a post on the other side of the globe, a beautiful and graceful ginger. The boys were quite small then and loved the soft and gentle creature. A tabby followed Ginger home the following winter and stayed. He was hardly ever in the house and did not particularly like the boys, but he started sleeping on a cushion on the window seat in the nursery during the day when the boys were out and after a couple of months, he would stay on his cushion even during weekends to the delight of the two children. They never tried to sit next to him, respected his privacy, but loved to be in the same room, just to be near him, as a special privilege.
Mark could not leave the cats with the boys although they would have loved to keep them. Their mother would not have the cats in the house after Mark had obtained his divorce. The younger boy begged her to let the cats stay, but she refused flatly. Mark then contacted an old friend who lived on a farm a couple of kilometres away, on the other side of the small town where they lived, far enough for the cats not to run back to their old home, but close enough for the boys to visit on their way to or from school. The important thing was not to let their mother know. The only time he had an opportunity to talk to the boys alone, he told them about the solution he had thought of, and they were both very happy about it. Knowing that the cats would not move far away, or worse, was an enormous relief to both and they solemnly promised never to let their mother know. Mark suggested using his friend’s address to write to the boys, if they agreed to keep this secret, as well. They looked quite happy and the little one even hugged him and told him he would miss him. The big one just mumbled that so would he.
“So there’s the solution”, Mark ended, proud of himself.
“To what?”
“The chickens, of course”. Mark looked at her. “We’ll take a long weekend trip, visit my good friend John and leave the chickens at his farm. I am sure he will agree to host them.”
“But we can’t just grab them and take them away from here. The neighbours will know and will demand to know what we have done.”
“Why would they know? It is exactly what I did with the cats. I just went and picked them up early one morning. They followed me to the car and just hopped in. They had been with me in the car so many times before. There’s nothing to it.”
“But, Mark, chickens are not cats. They don’t just follow you to the car. They make an awful noise when they are upset. We’ll never be able to pull this off.”
“You forget that I grew up in the countryside. Of course, chickens don’t just walk with you to a car, but they will walk into any box if the grains or seeds are tempting enough — you’ll see?”
“But what will we say if the neighbours ask us? I can’t just stand there and lie.”
“I don’t know, but we have told them often enough that if the chickens keep coming into our garden, they are fully capable of going elsewhere, as well. That they could walk onto the road, could walk into another garden where there are cats, or walk into the forest and be eaten by foxes — whatever. We have said this so often it almost makes my stomach turn just thinking about it. I want those beasts out of here for good!”
They planned the “kidnapping” for the following weekend. Mark called John who thought it was a brilliant plan and was quite prepared to “host” the chickens. They gave the neighbours yet another warning and were worried for a couple of days when the chickens did not turn up in the garden. Then on a Thursday morning they were back. This time Kate did not yell, just smiled, and made certain that she had sweet corn, wheat flakes and peas in her shopping bag in the afternoon.
They were up at dawn on the Friday. Mark placed two large cardboard boxes at the bottom of the garden and laid out tempting trails of Kate’s shopping directly to the boxes. Two hours later all five chickens were in the boxes, the lids closed and off they went. They reckoned the food they had placed in the boxes would be enough for most of the day. The only problem was water, but they found dog bowls at a gas station and filled them and continued north. Late in the afternoon they reached the farm and John received them with open arms and a big grin. The chickens were let into the barn, the humans settled in the kitchen to toast each other on the completion of a most successful campaign.
Two days later Kate and Mark were back at their own house. They spent a quiet afternoon in the garden where they planted hollyhocks, rhubarbs and a small cherry tree, gifts from John in exchange for the chickens.
Then the doorbell rang. They looked at each other and Mark went to see who it was. It was the neighbour, of course, who asked if the chickens were in their garden, and without lying Mark could safely say that they were not.
They never heard any more from the neighbours, and the neighbours did not introduce new chickens. They moved away about a year later and the new neighbours did not have chickens.
Kate’s seeds were left in peace and eventually produced the flowers she had been longing for. Mark’s boys began writing back to him and from them he heard about the cats as well as the chickens. Kate’s children spent some of their holidays with them, and finally, they settled into the life they had dreamed of.
And one day John turned up, a completely unexpected but very welcome visit. He hardly ever took time off from the farm and both Kate and Mark felt greatly honoured. He asked them to accompany him to the car and with a big smile he handed over a large basket of eggs.
“They are thriving, as you can see”, he said.
