Chickens and Eggs

My neighbors have chickens. Lots of them. A visit to my house would leave any casual observer suspecting that I too had chickens. Lots of them. It seems that the neighbor’s chickens are oblivious to the fence that separates their place from mine, and in fact, prefer my garden with its nice grass and fat worms.

This arrangement doesn’t seem to bother my neighbors at all. I guess it is more pleasant for them that the clucking of their chickens, their consistently disgusting poo, their baby chirps and their rooster’s song invade my side of the fence anyway.

They don’t seem to be aware that they daily expose me to the threat of Bird Flu, or that their roster has a interest in my kitchen table, on which I have seen him perch triumphantly on a number of occasions, or that they leave their feathers all over the cement under the house, and also, may I add, have begun to threaten my puppies and eat their rice, straight from their bowl.

If this was an amicable arrangement it would not be so bad, but recently, when we happily discovered that the brooding chicken mummies were also laying their eggs on the top of our well, we took them for our breakfast, delighted that we had at last found their nesting spot and could get some benefit from their presence in our garden.

Not for long. Within two days, our keen neighbors were over our fence, pointing out that their eggs had been stolen and did we have any idea where they had gone? Ah – so now the benefits are also not our own.

But yesterday we entered another phase all together. Clearly sick of the proud rooster throwing around its weight and stealing the rice from my puppy bowl, my increasingly fed up puppy murdered the rooster in cold blood, in our yard. I could say it was an accident, but my helper Rhee was witness to the fact, and the puppy hastily ate the evidence, but not before leaving a very convincing trail.

Now I need to visit my neighbors and apologize that my dog ate their prized rooster while it was thieving their lunch in my garden. Ah – Cambodia!