A lucky escape for Punk

I can’t tell you how very proud I am of myself today.   I actually managed to retain a huge amount of self-control and refrained from grabbing Punk by her scrawny lavender neck and wringing it!

To start at the beginning.

When I went down to let the chickens out the usual suspects emerged first, followed shortly after by by Tu-Tu.   Pom-Pom deigned to make an earlier-than-usual appearance, but that was it – no sign of Punk.  I opened the coop’s side door, just to make sure she was all right.  She wasn’t.   She was stretched out in the nest box, her breathing laboured, scarcely able to move.   She lifted her head slightly, but it was so much effort that she put it back down again.

I was aghast!   What on earth was wrong with the poor thing!   I went round and lifted the nest box lid so that I could get a closer look, try to ascertain what the problem was.   Before I could check her over my brave, brave little Araucana managed to drag herself up and staggered across the coop to the pophole.   She put a foot on the top of the ramp, wobbled, looked back at me and took another unsteady step.

I needed help and I needed it fast.  If she fell into the caged area it would mean crawling in on hands and knees to get her.   I’d do that willingly, but whether I’d ever manage to back out again while holding an ill chicken safely was another matter altogether.   I’d have to fetch No. 1 Son and he was asleep in bed.

I hurried up from our sloped garden as quickly as I could, then up two flights of steep 19^th century stone stairs.   I would have been puffing a bit if I was a fit 30-something.  But I’m rather more than double that and about as unfit as you can get, what with having a dicky ticker.  So I could scarcely speak when I staggered into my son’s room;  I gasped out the problem, he got dressed and down we went to the hen run.

And what did we find when we got there?   A perfectly fit, healthy chicken.   She gave me a look that said, “What?  Whaaaaat? ”

We realised that I must have woken her from a particularly deep sleep.  It was at that point, fortunately for her, that my self-control asserted itself.