Quite what we thought we were going to do to calm the flock down, I don't know! On reflection, we didn't have many options to choose from. Even with two of us down at the coop, we could hardly lift them all up in our arms, stroke their feathery heads and say, "There, there. Don't worry. It'll be all right soon." For one thing there's 8 of them and only two of us, so we don't have enough arm room between us to accommodate all of them at the same time. And anyway, I don't think they would have appreciated being yanked out of their comfortable coop, half asleep, no matter how good our intentions were.
Unlike today's horrible windy wet weather, it was an unseasonably mild evening. So, like the good, responsible chicken keepers we are, we stood and watched the fireworks before going to the chicken run. It was further away than we had, at first, thought. There were 3 fields and a river between us and a really smashing display of what appeared to be commercial-quality fireworks.
It all finally came to an end, so we trooped down to the hen coop, lifted the lid of the nest box and shone the torch in. Titian blinked up at us, started to shift her bulk out of the nestbox, then thought better of it. The blinking stopped and we were glowered at instead.
The other nestbox was occupied by a very bleary-eyed Maggie, who looked at us as if we'd gone stark staring mad. No, she hadn't been bothered by the fireworks, nor had anyone else, so would we mind pushing off so she could continue with her beauty sleep.
Needless to say, Fizz was so deeply asleep that he didn't disturb in the slightest when we looked in. I very much doubt that Rebecca or Punk heard the fireworks or were aware of us either. They would have been so deeply stuffed into Irene's feathers that any sound would have been so muffled as to be just about inaudible.
Everyone else seemed fine, so we quietly closed up and went back to the house.
Photo by Ricardo Pesce
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