Boudica

Prologue

As I sit here in front of the fire with a chicken in my arms, I remember some of the stories this sweet girl and I have shared. Now I type like a woman possessed to share some of these tales with you.

Chapter One

Here I am, head down, bum up, in the familiar downward facing mountain gardener pose.  Stretching as far as I possibly can to snip off that errant blackberry snaking through the peonies.  “Ow, you bastard,” I say to nobody but the blackberry as its long tail swings around and catches me on the shoulder.

There’s a familiar grumbling “bork” behind me, as if in sympathy.  

“Is that you Boudica?”  

“Bork” she replies.

“Are you having a good time?  Rich pickin’s here!”  I turn and see that it is indeed Boudica.  She’s scratching around in the garden bed I just finished weeding.  I’ve dug out some of the more vigorous or invasive plants, like the Stachys byzantina (lambs ears), and some Euphorbia (spurge), careful not to get any of its irritating sap on my skin. My weeding makes it easier for her to look for worms and other tasty treats in the soil.

Boudica – full name Boudica the Brave Warrior Queen of all Chickens, is my constant garden companion.  Her sisters will join in when they know there is something tasty to be had.  But Boudica is just always one step behind me, making her quiet bork noises now and then, just to make sure I know she is there and chat with her.

She didn’t always have such a lofty title. My daughter originally called her Jane.  But, after her second scrape with death, I changed it to Boudica. Named after the warrior Queen of the Iceni people, also known as Boadicea, the Welsh Queen and Boudicca the Queen of Britain.

Her first dice with death (the chicken, not Queen Boudica) she shares with two of her sister chickens.  Three neighbouring dogs come into our backyard and snatch up one chicken each and run through our next door neighbours block and into their lair.  My neighbour calls me, alarmed at what she has just seen, and together we look around for the chickens.

Jean finds Zoe hiding in a pile of her Agapanthus leaves. Then Hazel appears home a few hours later.  

After a day of looking I’ve given up hope of Jane returning and respectfully ask my remorseful neighbour to look and see if there is a chicken carcass in her dog’s pen.

But Jane said “Not today.” 

I’m not sure that I’ve ever bawled louder happy tears than when she slowly made her way up the steep embankment to the flat area of the chicken pen.

In the following weeks we unfortunately lose Hazel.  A pile of feathers on our drive way, and our sweet natured chookie friend is seen no more. I suspect the dogs returned to finish the job.

A few weeks later,  I get another phone call from Jean.

“It didn’t look good,” she warns me.

One of the dogs had pounced on a hen near her window, and took off down our drive with flapping chicken in his mouth.

My youngest and I head down the drive following the feathers like Hansel and Gretal. Hoping for best but expecting the worst, we head off the road and into the thickest and most overgrown area of our property. 

“Look, there!” points the boy at another pile of feathers.

We change direction down another path, looking into shrubbery for signs of chicken, dead or alive.

“Shhh! What’s that?” I say.

A soft borking noise is coming from a mound of strappy leaves.  I move the foliage with a stick and can hardly believe it when I see some orange feathers.

“In there! Can you get her?” I ask my younger and more nimble companion.

He crawls in and gently picks her up, and carries her for the 90 metres back to the chicken pen.  I’m doing a strange gulping, trying not to cry.  This time partly from joy and partly fear about the damage already done and huge bald patches where she has shed her feathers in her attempts to escape her preditors jaws.

I give her a once over and can’t see any damage so leave her to triumphantly greet her sister chickens.  

Miraculously, Jane survives her second attack and the feathers that grow back are a sweet honey colour contrasting against her original marmalade, leaving her with a beautiful striped plumage.

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“They’re all back except for Boudica!” I say to my daughter the following week, as we round up the chickens for bed.

“We don’t have a chicken called Boudica.”

“Yes we do.  Oh here she comes!  Boudica, why are you always the last to come home?”

I give her a hug and carry her to the hen house for bed.

And so, we crown her Boudica the Brave, Warrior Queen of all Chickens. A title she proves over and over that she is worthy of.

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“See, you won’t be forgotten,” I whisper in her ear. She looks around for a bit, then relaxes back onto my chest.

“You go when you’re ready,” I tell her. “You’ve been the best chicken ever. I don’t know what I would have done through those lock down years if it wasn’t for you.”