Cheepy, an island tale

In my third year here, I bought in some Black Rocket pullets from a neighbouring island, to add to my stock. They were already used to the outdoors and fiercely independent.; no lap or shoulder birds these! Fine big birds; a neighbour assured me they would lay "deep broon" eggs - as indeed they did. And still do......

Their plumage was black, with some russet; their feet repelled me. Black and scaly! Reminding of their reptilian streak....

One of them insisted on laying in the flourishing bed of the striped ornamental grass under my bedroom window; after some weeks of this, she began to show all the signs of going broody, so I gathered up a day''s eggs at random and put them in her nest. A clucky hen is a very valuable creature up here. Whether you want table birds or more chickens, this, after all, is the only way, even in this age of technological wonders, that you can get hens.. Or eggs for that matter......Oh, you can use an incubator, but it is just not the same......

It was a great comfort to me those weeks, as I lay sleepless with the window wide open to the sweet, wild night air, to hear the tiny chinking in the small hours as the black hen turned the eggs with that unerring and mysterious instinct. The smell when you get close is the worst in the world –– which is why you keep your distance. Which is the purpose of the smell.. No self-respecting predator is going to go near something that smells so utterly FOUL....... Another of the wonderful provisions in creation for the continuity of life.......

Now, I and others have found that hens, especially untried ones, are not very skilful when it comes to the actual hatching; the idea of a tiny bird dying in the shell is unthinkable. In previous years I had thus "helped" and intended to do so this time...... A hen''s forceful peck can bruise, This hen was certainly fierce......But I braved it at intervals on that hatching day...... There were tiny black chicks; one had already been crushed to death against the unhatched eggs, so I extracted those eggs that were still whole, leaving her to brood her chicks......

Indoors, I simply listened! The sound of the tapping and tiny cheeping from inside an egg is a miracle I never weary of. Over the next day and night, I helped the chicks out, then returned them to the brood; this at first confuses the hen, but she soon changes from hostility to nurturing.

There were a couple of eggs left; I was reluctant to throw them away, if there were any chance of a life in them, so I gave them just one more night under the lamp (a small reading light with a flexible neck).

In the morning there was a faint tapping from one......

It was so faint that I judged the chick was in difficulties, so carefully cracked the shell. This is difficult; if you get the timing wrong the chick dies. If you leave it too late, the chick dies.

I thought at first that I had been premature. But I soldiered on. Keeping the chick moist.

There is nothing quite so primeval as a hatching chick.

They lie curled so tightly in their nurturing shells, one huge claw over their head.. Huge bulging eyes. And still wet. No pretty fluffy creatures, until the breath of life has filled them out, and the air dried their straggly covering.

This chick took so long to gather any strength; they have enough nourishment still in them from the yolk sac for about 48 hours. After a couple of days, he had rallied enough, I judged, to be restored to his family. I had no wish, and was simply not well enough, to adopt a tame chicken!

As it was I had been up for a night or two, and all I needed was to sleep......

The chick was thoroughly delighted to go to his natural mother; although I had gathered eggs at random, all the hatched chicks were black. Except this one, who was a pale yellow... Baby chicks grow so swiftly. His siblings were by now two days ahead of him, two vital days that are a long while in their lives.

I watched the saga unfold from the doorstep. The grass was long, as I had been too ill to cut it. Mother hen would lead her chicks; she would find a tasty morsel, and call to them in that husky, throaty way. The black chicks would scurry to her. Devour the morsel. And in the van, game, valiant, but hopelessly outrun, there would be the tiny yellow chick.. By the time he got there, the food was eaten, and the group, was moving on to the next feed..

I tried to remedy this by feeding them, of course. But every time, the story was the same. The sheer spunk of that chick! He never gave up trying.

I deemed that he would be fine at nights, safely under the hen.

But the mist and a soaking drizzle came in. One night I was woken ( the nights here are very short in the summer, so I was in bed way before the

chickens) by a plaintive and incredibly loud cheeping......It went on and on, the epitome of terror and need. So, I pulled myself out of bed, dragged on a cardigan and fetched the torch...... It took me a long time to trace the sound; I was so near, but I just could not find the chick...... By now, the sleeve of my cardigan was soaked through, from searching in the tall grass, and an uncomfortable wet chill was seeping through it onto my back from the drizzle. And still no chick. Eventually the torch beam fell on this tiny yellow, bedraggled scrap of fluff, firmly wedged in a tuft of grass.

I carried him into the kitchen, where the box and lamp still stood at the ready. He was SOAKED! Drying him off as best as I could, I put him on the sweet dry grass under the lamp. He was shivering so hard he kept falling over, poor scrap......

All I could do was leave him to recover –– and find dry nightclothes..

In the morning there he was, cheeping away, full of life and joy,, ready for food and goat's milk......

A neighbour told me that if I wasn''t careful, I would find myself with "a very silly chicken"! But it was said with such affection! Obviously she was speaking from a happy experience.. And what choice here?

A pattern emerged; every morning I would put him outside with the other chicks – then at night I found I needed to bring him in for safety. He took a few days to recover fully from his soaking, and every morning I would pad down the corridor, heart in my mouth, expecting to find a pathetic little corpse. And every morning there would be the sunshine of his enthusiastic cheeping to greet me.

I had until then no idea of how wide a chick''s verbal repertoire is; they have a song all of their own. "I am ALIVE! I love life! Isn''t it wonderful? BE HAPPY!" There are trills and scales, a veritable aria of song! And this tiny creature''s joi de vivre and enthusiasm were so infectious.

Oh, I went on making very sincere efforts to keep him in his chicken world......After a couple of weeks, I decided it was time the chicks were in the back with the other hens. Their depredations on the few flowers I had and on the even fewer vegetables I had managed to plant were getting very serious. This was before I had the excellent coop made, so I improvised a netting enclosure, resolutely gathered all the chicks up in a bucket and, with the black hen squawking away, carried them through the house and into the back. I put them all in, then went back and caught the hen. FINE!! This, I reasoned, was after all better for Cheepy he was bigger now and I could still keep a close eye on him...... To this day I have no idea how he got out of the coop. None of the other chicks managed it. But there he was at the back door, cheeping indignantly....... Yes, I now had a very, very silly chicken....... And I was charmed and delighted at this awesome responsibility......

Motherhood to an "unclaimed treasure " as I was then, is to be taken very seriously, you must realise. Here I was, now the sole supporter of a frail and tiny chick......

That summer we had long periods of clear skies and hot sunshine for the hay-making..The sounds and smells are still so strong in my memory.

I was not well enough to do very much, but to lie on the sun-baked grass was sheer bliss.. And wherever I went, Cheepy came too, When I slept out there in the balmy days, he snuggled up in the crook of my elbow, crooning and chirping. His happiness revolved around being as close to me as possible. When I tried a little light gardening, which for me was to sit on the ground with a small trowel, Cheepy thought this was solely for HIS benefit. After all, this was behaviour he understood with every chicken instinct. The mother hen scratching for food for him......

When I had been to the shore, he would run flapping to greet the car, ecstatic, and perch on my arm like a falcon. When I got up in the morning, he was on the doorstep; if I was late, he would cheep indignantly. All this is tremendously healing.

When you feel too ill to be any use to any living creature, and a tiny young thing attaches itself limpet-like to you, it reaches to your very soul. His total dependence, emotionally and physically, awed and delighted. As his feathers grew in, it was clear he was going to be pure white, a throwback to some distant ancestor......

But summers end.

When he grew very big, I deemed it fairer to accustom him to life with the other chickens. A chicken inside the house is a daunting thought.. So, into the back he went. There was some initial pecking from the other hens, (they distrust strangers), but this soon resolved. It was so hard to let him go like this! After a while I really thought he had totally forgotten me and this was not easy! Then one day as I was filling the peat buckets, there he was, scratchng around where I was collecting, with that old expression in his eyes, wanting to be tickled......

He was huge, a fine white cockerel, and I was so proud of him......

But winter comes early here; at the end of October we had a very wet and cold spell. One day he was limping badly. I waited to see if he would cope. The next day there was no white cockerel out there, and my heart nearly stopped. I searched out in the rain, a reminder of seeking him on that earlier night. And found him, under the portacabin, unable to walk. So, it was back into a cardboard box in the kitchen, with sweet dry hay, a pot of milk and a dish of food. He was ecstatic at this! Cheeping and eating greedily! And it was so comforting to have him there again. I kept trying to get him to walk, with no success.

I knew what the outcome was to be.

And one morning I came in to the kitchen, to a stillness. It is a strange and unmistakable quietness, this absence of life when death has visited.

Cheepy was there, head under his wing. He had simply fallen asleep......

I duly buried him where all my treasured friends lie, in the sheltered patch just outside the garden looking out over the sea, with rosa rugosas bending over, and the sweet birdsong and moonlight. Probably he was never in nature''s way "meant" to live; there was a weakness, a flaw –– which is why he needed help even to hatch.

But he had such a blissfully happy little life! Just four months, and he had given so much in that time, of joy and of love.

Not a bad record for an egg........