What the cluck? – The Wuff With The Smooth

I swear to God, if Waffle was a person, you’d take him to a head doctor to have him looked about. Either that or you could stick him in a padded room and leave him to die of stupidity.

You may remember from some weeks ago I mentioned that we were getting hens. You may also remember that I mentioned Waffle would be under strict instructions not to violate said hens upon their arrival. I remember these things and you may remember these things. Waffle, on the other hand, remembers nothing. He hears nothing. He heeds nothing.

“Can we take Waffle with us to get the hens?” one of the little humans asked as we were preparing to leave for the pick-up. “Waffle has more chance of scoring the winning goal in the world cup final than coming with us to pick up the hens. Not a hope.”

Thereafter, upon our safe return from the hen shop, the cardboard box in the back seat containing three prime laying pullets, Waffle heralded our return by going mental in the kitchen, knocking over a vase on the windowsill. Great start! I mean, who wouldn’t want a dog that does that? Anyway…

This next thing says more about me than it does about anything else, but when we had returned with the hens I had still to finish the chicken run/enclosure. My thinking was: I’ll just get the hens and then I’ll be forced to finish the structure. It was a kind of a deadline thing.

“Structure” though, is probably too kind a word for the chicken run/ enclosure I knocked up. It basically consisted of several fence posts battered into the ground with a sledge hammer and brute ignorance and then these were wrapped in chicken wire. The “gate” such as it is, is four planks of wood nailed together and this sits at the entrance to the chicken run/enclosure. You might say it’s a rudimentary home and a temporary one at that. You might also say it’s more for keeping the hens in, rather than keeping anything else out. Anyway…

When night falls, the hens generally return to their coop, an actual proper structure which is more like a five-star resort for poultry. It has everything a hen would need like nesting boxes, a drinker and a perch for roosting upon.

“It’s your clucky day,” I told the hens when the chicken run/enclosure was finished and I was opening the cardboard box. “Welcome to the great outdoors. You’re free to range. All you have to do is lay eggs every day and if you do that, I won’t eat you.”

“Cluck- cluuuuuuck,” said the brown one.

This vocalisation had a two-fold affect. Waffle growled with as much menace as his toyish hairiness could muster and then I swiped at him with my right foot.

“Right dog!” I growled back. “No giving the chickens guff, remember!”

The reality was (and is), we have a dog and we have chickens and so the two parties will have to get used to one another. That being the case, the first morning after the hens arrived, I let them out of their five-star coop resort and into the chicken run/enclosure. I then let Waffle out and the two of us sat on the grass two or three yards away from the complex. The hens noticed Waffle from time to time as they busied about in the pecking business and Waffle couldn’t take his eyes off the hens. Periodically, he would let out a small, excited moan and I would verbally tick him off with a sharp, “Dafupyouonaboutdog!” This has the desired affect and so the getting-to-know-one-another process continued for about ten minutes, until I had finished my mug of tea, the hens began to ignore us and Waffle stopped whining – although to be fair, whined less.

All was well with the world and in the coming days any time that I went to feed/water/stare-at/search for eggs, I brought the Waff along so the acclimatisation could continue. Any time he moaned or growled I growled back and after the third day, he had all but ceased the whiny aggression. Or so I thought.

On morning number four, a bright day with Toy Story clouds, I was making breakfast in the kitchen when I heard an almighty, “MIIIIICHAEEEEL!” This, I took as a bad sign and moving quickly to the kitchen sink I could see immediately that all was not well at the luxury chicken resort. All three hens were in the air at once, flapping frantically over an unseen terror on the ground. I say “unseen” but I knew who it was, because I’d just let him out for a widdle. Striding to the back door with murder on my mind, all I could think was: If any of those hens are missing a single feather, Waffle, my lad, you are in bother.

Bounding over to the luxury resort I was greeted with a scene which was almost comical. All three hens sat atop the coop, the picture of regal disdain and hang-dog Waffle was pawing at the wire in the corner attempting, in vain, to escape from the scene of the crime.

“You clown, dog.”

After a quick visual inspection of the three chooks and satisfied that, unbelievably, none were missing wings, heads or even feathers, I opened the gate and beckoned the hairy fool out. He could tell, of course, that I wasn’t one bit pleased with his incursion and I could tell that he had made this realisation as he slunk out low to the ground, slow and then quick as he passed by my foot. However, I did not lash out or even, for that matter, complain any further. There was no need. He knew what he had done and better still, he knew that I knew what he had done. There was a mutual understanding that an incident of gross misconduct had taken place but somehow, the knowing was all that was necessary. Maybe he had been only up for playing with the hens but that didn’t matter. The law had been broken.

As I mentioned already, this “structure” is more adept at keeping the hens in than keeping anything else out, a downside I will have to rectify in the coming weeks if I want to be able to leave the hens out and be away from the house for any length of time.

In hindsight though, Waffle getting in that one time and being caught red-pawed is probably the best thing that could have happened. This contravention of the rules was acutely appreciated when he was apprehended. Moreover, over a week later and there has been but one break-in at the luxury resort. Waffle sniffs and whines sometimes but he hasn’t attempted a second heist and he can even sit and watch as the poultry peck about their business in his vicinity.

He may be stupid sometimes but he appreciates life-preservation – his own, that is.