Jemima the Chicken (an antidote to cat stories)
On moving into a house, I once took on the right to 'look after' someone elses chicken. This was back when I was first living on the national trust estate.
The lodge house that I was renting backed onto a courtyard that was for my private use. Leading off from this courtyard was a barn and an old building that had been a bakery 300 years before.
Now this was where Jemima the chicken had taken up residence.
The chicken had belonged to a batty old aunt of the landlords wife. When she'd died the only thing she'd left them was this chicken.
I was given a bag of chicken feed and was asked 'if I didn't mind awfully, just now and then, to give her a bit of feed and look after her?'
I didn't really mind, it was an unusual request but the rent was cheap and I got to enjoy the grounds whenever I wanted to. Also, the landlord and landlady liked to smoke weed, something dear to my own heart.
Anyway, when I moved in I also moved in a modest trio of young healthy ganja plants and installed them in the courtyard where I thought they would get plenty of sun. I'd been growing them for about six weeks and was keeping an eye out for some good bud growth.
At this point, you'd think it would have been prudent of someone to point out to me that chickens eat EVERY FUCKING BIT OF PLANT LIFE IN THE FUCKING GARDEN before I'd put them out there.
Within two hours of moving in, my plants where frayed green stumps.
I looked around the garden, all the flowerbeds in the courtyard had nothing but dirt in them. This chicken had eaten everything in the garden and anything I put out there would suffer the same fate.
I knew the fucker had to go and I wish this tale was one of revenge and that I had been the instrument of her death (one involving lots of roast spuds). Sadly, this was not to be.
She lived quite happily alongside us for about six months and, during that time, put me off eating eggs for a couple of years.
Every now and then, she would lay one for us to collect. We'd eat it, marvelling at how great it was to have a chicken laying eggs for us (even if it was only the odd one).
Then one day, my cat was playing with a mouse in the courtyard. The cat and the chicken usually avoided eachother, but on this day, Jemima noticed what the cat was doing and strode over. It walked straight up to the mouse, broke it's back with one peck and swallowed it whole (that's when I stopped eating eggs).
You should have seen the look on the cats face.

One day, Jemima didn't come out of her 'house' but several large rats did (and were promptly shot).
We never did find much of her, just the odd feather.
I like to think that the mice got the rat mafia onto her.

The landlady was a bit miffed that I'd let her chicken die, until I reminded her about the ganja plants being eaten.
"Fair point" she said.
(EvilMeister, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 18:41, Reply)