KSP and Jonas are away for a few days and KSP asked Mirinda if she could pop over to the house and feed the newly hatched chicks. They were in a big cage, each of them sitting on and under, a heated platform, waiting for their food. It felt like we were doing a Foodora delivery.
They didn’t remain on and under the platform for long. As soon as I reached in and grabbed the food bowls, they went a bit mental, chirping and flapping around. When I returned the full bowls, they went even more mental.
Sadly, there were two dead chicks in the big cage. One in each corner of one end. I don’t know how they died. Sickness, fighting, a chicken assassin with a high-powered rifle? I have no idea. But they were certainly dead.
There was no time for a proper autopsy, besides, I’m no coroner. Though, of course, it was my job to dispose of the little bodies. Which I did with as much ceremony as I could muster. None, really. I just got rid of them.
It wasn’t just the chickens that needed feeding. The two cats were also hovering around, waiting for some cat food. Actually, one cat was outside while the other was sitting, catlike, on a cabinet near the dining table.
The girls were with us and happily trotted into the house, completely ignoring the cat on the cabinet. They spotted the one outside though and started carrying on from the other side of the glass door. The one on the cabinet looked at them but did nothing else.
It took a while, but eventually the girls saw the cat on the cabinet and all hell broke loose. For about 10 seconds. The cat escaped to the safety of upstairs while we shut the dogs in with us.
It wasn’t exactly an arduous job and we were finished very quickly. In fact the longest job was Mirinda writing her chicken report for KSP. It was then home to a Sunday dinner of saffron lamb shanks. Which was a bit tastier than what I fed the chicks which, obviously, we didn’t stand on.
In response to Mirinda’s chicken report, KSP wrote that she hoped we were okay with the brutality of chicken life. I think the brutality of chicken death is worse.
