Adventures of a Pair of Urban Chickens

When we moved into our house one of the things I was most excited about was the chance to own some chickens. Our house already had a chicken coop left from the previous owners, and I wasted no time in buying two ex-battery hens (Maude & Mavis) who started laying straight away. I was very upset when Mavis met an untimely end thanks to our dog, but Owen fixed the escape route in the chicken run which meant I could get another chicken (Mabel) to keep Maude company.

Everything seemed to be going well. The chickens were laying a dozen eggs a week between them, the dog was behaving most of the time, and Maude only pecked Owen's toes becuase she thought they were edible. I was blissfully unaware of the double lives the chickens were leading.

The day after our wedding when we returned home it was to find an angry note on the front door. Apparently our chickens had been terrorising the neighbourhood and had traumatised the children from next door who were now too scared to go outside. We went over to apoligise to the neighbours and found out that Mabel had actually gone inside their house. I like to think that the incident went a little something like this (but with a chicken instead of a goose).