But the other morning as I lay there, moonlight peeking round the edges of our caravan blinds, each second ticking intolerably by, I could take it no longer.
“I’m gonna grab one of those bloody chooks and cook it,” I muttered to the darkness.
I leapt to my feet, threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and told Mrs P in no uncertain terms I was going out to sort things.
From under the covers I swear I heard her mutter: “Get me a bucket too.”
Okay. So let me explain.
We are parked up at present in a very pleasant rural location.
For the three weeks or so we’ve been here it has been pretty much perfect. Nice on the eye. Friendly neighbours and peaceful.
Well, mostly peaceful. All except for the other night that is. That’s when we encountered the chickens under the trees on the other side of the wire fenceline separating the two properties.
I say “other side”. Most of them were on that side but half a dozen had jumped over the fence to our side and were obviously trying to persuade their mates to come join them.
Now, before I go on I must stress this encounter was, and has been, a total one-off. We are not about to let one sleepless night taint our pleasant experience.
I’m only writing about it because I discovered some interesting things about these “chickens” and, well, our encounter with them appealed to my warped sense of humour so I thought I’d share it.
Anyway.
Turns out the chooks in question next door are, in fact, guinea fowl. And they can be rather noisy. Especially when I’m asleep and all around is silent and it’s 3am.
Now, dear reader, some among you may be aware the Romans back in the day would use geese as security for their many army bases up and down their many frontiers.
By all accounts these geese made a hell of a racket if any would-be invader tried to, er, invade. Naturally this caused all the Roman soldiers to stop watching The Flintstones on telly, grab their swords and go sort it out.
Fast forward a million years and it turns out in some places the geese are out and guinea fowl are in.
They are even being used to guard prisoners in some jails.
Turns out they are noisier than geese, cheaper than humans who will want to be paid – imagine that – and have been known to scare off cats, ferrets, weasels and even hawks.
Apparently the only common predator a guinea fowl can’t take on is a dog. Unless of course it’s my dog who was obviously off sick the day his class studied Dog Bravery.
More on that later.
Turns out your average guinea fowl is a bit of a jittery copycat and will just follow the one he or she is standing next to and do the same thing.
So, if you stumble out of your caravan at 3am and approach the one you think is the leader and ask it to, er, move along, all 20 in the flock are likely to tell you to “go away”. In guinea fowl speak of course.
I guess what I’d expected is the “cac, cac, cac” which had been pretty incessant for a couple of hours would have stopped, the adventurous six would have hopped back over the fence and they’d all just move off up the fence line to another stand of trees offering the same standard of accommodation they’d just vacated.
It didn’t.
I’d also expected them to be a little intimidated by George The Dog, albeit on three-legs and looking sleepily around wondering why his stupid owner was bothering about these equally stupid birds.
They weren’t.
