Rural Ramblings: Chickens come home to roost

The youngest unruly chicken is keen on the indoor life.

I've forgotten what a dry summer is like after the last couple of damp summers. These past few months have been extraordinary with regular rain including — how many was it, three in the past month? — cyclones giving everything a good drenching.

Combined with the warm temperatures, the grass has grown like mad and we can't complain about that. But the ground is now so damp that we are uneasy about what winter has in store for us if the ground doesn't have a chance to dry out.

But that's in the future and, as always, so much is going on that it's hard to worry too much about what might happen a few months down the track.

At least it is quiet on the home front with all the students back at university — as well as our two daughters home for the holidays, we had one of their partners for most of the summer, along with a revolving door of assorted friends.

One of these was a Scottish lad, keen for some farming experience and home cooking. The night before he landed on our doorstep, the poor boy camped in Huntly. I was amazed that Huntly even has a camping ground. It's difficult to imagine the coal-fired power station is much of a tourist drawcard.

By the time he arrived we had run out of beds for visitors, so Harry slept on a mattress in the garage, which is uninsulated and stifling hot in summer and, at the time, infested with flies. It was possibly even worse than the Huntly campground.

He seemed to enjoy his time on farm, helping with whatever odd jobs we could find for him. His car needed a warrant and needed some work before it could pass, so he left it at the garage overnight, only to have the garage owner call him the next morning and say all four of his tyres were stolen.

With his car immobilised, Harry was trapped with us (cue many jokes about Harry the hostage, forced to sleep in Third World conditions and work like a slave). He hitched a ride to Auckland for the start of university, and when he came back to pick up his car, Bruce was away. Harry had dinner, packed his car and said goodbye, only to meet deafening silence from his car's ignition.

That's okay, we could use my car to jump start his, so I squeezed my vehicle in beside his, only to find our car batteries were on opposite sides and we needed extra-long jumper leads. Twelve-year-old Angus came to the rescue — he knew where to find some.

With trial and error and explosions of sparks (should you have to jump start a car with no clue what you are doing, there's a helpful website called jumpstarting for dummies), we had his old bomb running.

But as I locked up for the night I saw a bag on our front doorstep. Opening it, I discovered it was Harry's, filled with all his important documents, iPad, etc. Luckily he still had phone and wallet, so could cope for a few days until we found someone to take it back to Auckland for him.

The only visitors we deal with now are Jack's unruly young chickens. The youngest and most aggressive of these comes into the house whenever she finds a door open and helps herself to any food she finds lying around, including whatever's lurking in the cats' dishes.

The cats resent this but are too well-mannered (or scared) to take on a chicken, so glare malevolently from a distance. She and her four fellow chickens have decided the ideal spot to roost is a rock right outside the front door. In fact, it's far from ideal as it's exposed to wind and there's no shelter from rain, but they're too young yet to go into the coop with the big chickens and rooster.

The night of the most recent cyclone we saved them from themselves and popped them in the bathroom for the night. This was apparently more luxurious than their rock, because the five of them now spend the evening hovering around the front door and throwing themselves at the windows, trying to break in.

Having spent a good half hour picking up feathers and scrubbing poop off the floor, I'm refusing to host these particular visitors again.