Wendyl Nissen: Fowl play with Matilda

For an interesting social experiment bring a live chicken to the dinner table and watch how guests react. Photo / Supplied

I knew it would come to this one day. I would be the woman entertaining guests at our kitchen table while stroking a hen.

Allow me to introduce you to Matilda, our baby hen who came back with us from the caravan in January.

Back then she was just a little black ball of fluff, found huddling underneath a trailer, approximately 24 hours old and unlikely to make it through the next 24. She would be lunch for a hawk, rat or wild cat. It was love at first sight.

"When I said we could have hens, I never envisaged that they would sit at the dinner table with us," commented my husband, trying his best to make light of the fact that Matilda had perched on a dining chair and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the conversation taking place.

"I think it suits her, I see no reason why she can't become the house chicken. I'm sure lots of people have house chickens," I responded, noticing that everyone else sitting at the table had fallen silent.

They were eyeing up Matilda, who was eyeing up the home-made pizza I had just put on the table. Matilda loves cheese.

"This happen often?" ventured one of our guests, reaching over and firmly shifting the food out of reach.

"Sometimes," I said with a nonchalant air.

"She's joking," said my husband quickly. "Never happened before," he lied before casting a look in my direction which said: "Either you catch that chicken now or she's a dead duck."

It's interesting to watch how people react to the fact that you have a chicken in your kitchen. Two guests just kept talking to each other, refusing to look. Another was totally entranced.

She is very beautiful, my Matilda. She has black- and white-laced feathers, and when she grows her red comb I imagine she will look like one of those stylish hats you see on 1940s movies - the height of sophistication.

She has been my constant companion these past three months, first taking up residence in my office then in my vege patch, much to the outrage of the three fat red hens on the other side of the fence.

My attempts at integrating my little darling with her evil stepsisters have consistently been met with brutality. They get her in a corner and proceed to peck clumps of feathers off her in a frenzy of dust and squawking. They are obviously jealous of her beauty and sophistication.

So Matilda lives on the other side of the fence where she has decided to be a cat. Opting to hang out with our eldest cat Kitty most days, lounging around under the lime tree where they indulge in long grooming sessions, side by side. Individual grooming - not mutual. That would be weird.

At night she would obediently hop into the night box I had fashioned out of an old crate with a bit of wire, so that she would be safe from predators.

Then I left the family to put Matilda to bed one night. Apparently it took an hour. There were tears, dust and squawking, and someone fell over. Since that day Matilda hasn't liked going to bed.

Which is why she started living in the kitchen. At night she would sit pathetically outside the kitchen door in the dark, calling me in her little hen voice, asking to be let in to safety and protection.

"What are we going to do when we have guests?" reasoned my husband. "You'll freak them out."

Matilda was eventually caught that night, but only after I was on my hands and knees under the table throwing raisins at her while she screeched her head off.

I may have had a few wines by this time. She was offered around the table for a friendly pat, which was only taken up by one guest, the aforementioned fascinated one. The others opted for fumigation, hastily lighting cigarettes and squinting through the smoke at her.

Matilda has been since banned from the kitchen and now every night she settles down, perched, unloved and rejected on the barbecue. I wait until she nods off and then gently pick her up, like a sleeping child and place her in her box while the fat, red hens cluck in disgust.

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