Vinegar Tits and The Crackhead Whores

Vinegar Tits on patrol

 A Memory,

Yesterday I  rested at home. 

The power was off in my cottage and Mandy and John's next door from 6 am ( how odd given yesterday's drama) so we had to wait for the linesmen to put up another line to replace the faulty one which took most of the day.

I wrote notes and made tea from boiling water donated by neighbours

Mr Posnân stopped to chat ( after he spied the flashing lights of the linesman truck)

He chatted about the Ukrainian village like old men do about the past

 He reminded me that over Fourteen years ago, I took in a group of a dozen hens that had been badly mistreated. (He watched me offload them from the belingo)

They had been housed in dreadful conditions , were underfed, bald and dreadfully bullied. 

But I hoped they had potential so I took them in and housed them in their own warm , clean hen house with plenty of food.

They had no cockerel but were watched over by a black eyed grey alpha female who had attitude and like all hens in a large group, they had the potential for trouble, as they outnumbered most of the smaller hen groups in the Ukrainian village

Rather uncharitably I nicknamed them The Crackhead Whores with the alpha singled out as Vinegar Tits ( the hero of the Australian Prison Soap Prisoner Cell Block H

The surviving group, well fed and happy

I learned a great deal from The Crackheads. I learned that With patience, space, time and good conditions the group that survived their first winter would become beautiful hens and great layers And Vinegar Tits became more of a cockerel than any of the resident males, even to the extent of running towards an attacking fox when the less dominant hens and ducks and turkeys galloped for the cover and the safety of the village buildings and the Guinea fowl flew up into the Churchyard Ash trees, screaming their warnings to the field.

I miss those days sometimes but couldn’t return to the hard physical slog it was to keep the field population healthy and happy

Mr Posnän agreed thoughhe still missed the duck eggs

It was lovely to see the photos again yesterday