‘The honey-coloured one with the funny hat,” said Myles, our youngest son. “I’m calling her Honey!” With that, we’d completed our family mission to choose a mixed flock of chickens at a rural poultry farm. And so we set off on the return journey to Melbourne with three cardboard cartons containing six ISA Brown laying hens and three pet bantams.
Since it was late in the day, the whole flock went into our fox-proof coop, with the usual settling-in biffo. Honey immediately came out on top, even with chickens twice her size who were clearly scared of her intense, don’t-mess-with-me demeanour. But next morning she relaxed a little when introduced to the new chicken run under our olive tree, and so did I. Until that afternoon, anyway, when there was a knock on our front door.
“Are you missing a chicken?’ said my neighbour. “There’s one on the power lines by the railway track.”
Yep, there she was, around the corner, perched on a high-voltage cable close to some tall trees.
Determined not to see my son’s pet fly away, I found an old fishing net and climbed the nearest tree until I was eye-to-eye with Honey, who was peering at me suspiciously.
It was just feasible. I grasped a branch with one hand, at full stretch, extended the net with the other – and right then a bus passed underneath, so near that I was buffeted by its wind. The branch swayed, Honey squawked, and I realised how stupid I was. I would snare the escaper with my net, contact the power cable, and we’d both be electrocuted then plunge to the road and be run over by a bus. My legacy to my grieving family would be a small, squashed, fried chicken.
Honey must have come to the same realisation. After an instant of hesitation she leapt off the power cable and manically flapped her way over some neighbouring houses before disappearing into some distant trees.
Well, I thought. There goes my money. Second thought: I didn’t know chickens could fly. And how could I break the news to Myles?
He didn’t take it well. His brothers still had their pets; his had literally flown the coop. Next morning he went to school, disconsolate, and I ushered our diminished flock outside. And at lunchtime, heard a familiar squawk.
There was Honey, marshalling the other chickens, strutting about as if she owned the place. She enjoyed a status beyond her size that was instantly recognised by her peers. As we had no rooster (illegal in the burbs) Honey became the back-yard matriarch, belting out a garbled cock-a-doo now and then, steadfastly scanning for threats and encouraging the flock to eat before she did. And if we failed to open the outside run according to her strict schedule, she maintained a persistent refrain of protest at a pitch that got on your nerves.
Like most semi-wild birds, she laid only in spring, stashing her clutch of small brown eggs under some timber in the run. Four weeks later she would reappear, ragged and ravenous, having given up on the infertile pile until ready to have another go next year. One spring, the year of our great chook-yard massacre, Honey was thus one of the few hens to survive a fox’s onslaught by staying calm and still on her hidden eggs. Which meant that, ironically, Myles was the only brother left with a pet.
Honey survived long enough to become a fixture far beyond his childhood. I never had quite the same affection for her, and this was possibly mutual. We didn’t get off to a good start, after all, and she was a bit strident for my liking. But my son was able to coax her to his lap for grooming sessions when no one else could. She lived for more than 14 years, which I believe is close to the lifespan record for chickens.
When her time came (likely due to a stroke) and she could no longer reach her perch, we rested her, paralysed, on the lawn. It was a warm spring day, and she peacefully expired in the gentle sunlight. My son, then 23, was moved to commission a granite headstone that still marks her grave under the olive tree at one end of the chicken run where she ruled as grande dame for so long, and so well.
