by Alan Parks
Next, J-Lo went missing. There was no apparent reason and we didn’t find any evidence of fowl play! By this time the chickens had begun to explore further and further away from the house. You may remember, if you’ve read my earlier books, the story of me herding the chickens up the track and through our gate, only to be caught in the act by Miguel, who just shook his head at me.
Auntie Eileen was just found dead in the chickens’ room one morning (these incidents are spread out over two years, we didn’t have an epidemic), as was Auntie Marge. Beyoncé got the same wheezy chest and died in her sleep a few days later. Finally, Nanny Audrey was another chicken who just went missing, never to be seen again.
The other chickens don’t seem to be aware that one of their group has gone. We were left with Auntie Mabel and Auntie Jess, who just carried on as if nothing had changed and went around as a duo. That was until Auntie Jess became broody.
We didn’t do much research about chickens before we acquired our first batch, but we had heard of them becoming broody. The answer, we were told, was always just to push them off their nest and soon they would snap out of it.
I am not sure whether Auntie Jess was a normal example of a broody chicken, but she was certainly something else. Usually she was the most outgoing of our chickens; she came running when we went out in the evening to feed her and she even jumped up to sit on the bucket we use to feed the alpacas. One time, she jumped up and sat on Lorna’s (not inconsiderable) chest; but when she gets broody her personality changes.
We didn’t have a cockerel, as the noise would disturb our holiday guests, so there was no chance of her incubating any babies from the eggs she was keeping warm. When she was broody she would turn moody and sullen and just sit on her eggs all day. When I opened the door of the chicken house in the morning, I’d lift her gently and place her on the ground and watch her. For a moment she’d sit still, as though still on her nest. Then slowly she would rise, fluffing and puffing herself up, until she was about 50% wider than normal, then she ran. With a loud squawk she took herself off on a circuit of the paddock at 100 miles an hour, before having a drink and retreating back to her nest. I have no idea if this was normal behaviour for a broody chicken.
Sometimes Auntie Jess’s broodiness could last weeks, so when Auntie Mabel was left wandering the paddocks alone, we decided it was time to get some more chickens. This time we were going to do it on our own.
As usual, we tried to combine reasons to visit Cordoba. If we need to buy things from certain shops that aren’t in Montoro, we compile a list ready for our next visit to the city.
So we set out on a relatively cool Spring morning, with our list of jobs culminating in the chicken shop sometime in the late morning. Of course, things always take longer than you imagine, especially in Spain, and we were nearing siesta time. We were having trouble finding the chicken farm. Eventually we pulled into the yard about five minutes before the scheduled siesta. One thing we’ve learnt since we’ve lived here, is that as long as we’re in place before siesta starts we should be OK.
Lorna and I wandered over to the shop area to look at the chicken menu on the wall, pointing out beautiful examples of chickens and discussing which we might want to buy, when a young man approached us.
I explained that I wanted some gallinas for the finca. They were only for eggs, not to be eaten as meat. I pointed at a picture of a beautiful Silkie chicken. Friends of ours had had Silkies, until their dogs digested them, and we loved their fluffy, Disney look. The man shook his head at us, and directed us into a small room filled with cages crammed with chickens.
In this room was a younger man and the two had a discussion. The younger man said to us, “For eggs!” and pointed at the chickens in the cages and the eggs underneath.
These chickens looked older than the last ones we had bought, which had been 6 weeks old and a bald, scraggy mess and had taken a few months to start laying. Evidently these were 6 months old and the evidence in front of us said that these were already producing. There were some light brown ones, dark brown ones, and some white ones that had a really tall comb and they were laying white eggs.
Lorna and I had a quick discussion and we decided on two of each of the different colours. That would bring our total up to eight and give us a good deal of eggs over the coming months.
“Dos, dos, dos!” I said to the man, pointing to the three different colours.
The younger man held the cages open while the other man plunged his hand in, dragging out chickens by the legs and holding them upside down. I don’t know what it is, but in that position chickens don’t seem to struggle, they just hang there, they could even be dead for all you know.
The chickens were unceremoniously dumped into a cardboard box (with air holes) which was then taped shut. I lifted the box into the car and paid the bill. When we got home, we took the chickens to their new house and placed the box on the floor. Auntie Jess was sitting on her nest as usual, but once the new chickens came out and we put some food in the bowl for them, she jumped down and started telling them off.
The new chickens were obviously nervous, having been confined to tiny cages, probably for their entire lives. They were now able to move freely, but they just huddled in the corner, out of the way of both us and Auntie Jess. We shut the door and left them to settle in for a while.
When we returned later to put Auntie Mabel to bed, we found all the new chickens huddled in a pile at the top of the concrete stairs in the room. The stairs lead to a trapdoor and above is the dog room, where Miliko and his friends live. Miliko could obviously tell there was something going on underneath him, as he was frantically scratching at a small hole in the trapdoor. The chickens, however, seemed to be oblivious and just stayed curled up in their own little huddle.
Over time they got braver, exploring down the stairs and around the room. After a few days we let them out for their first experience of the countryside; they ran around in all directions, seeming to love it.
When the eggs first appeared, we found them in strange places. Sometimes they were at the top of the stairs where they liked to sleep and one time we found a whole dozen in the alpacas’ hay. We also have a hay feeder a few feet off the ground in the alpaca paddock and we even found a few eggs in there. Eventually, they settled down and found the correct place to lay their eggs and at the moment we are in receipt of about five eggs a day.
Chapter 2 5
Trouble in Paradise
Lorna and I fell into renting out our apartment to holiday guests because the alpaca business didn’t take off and we needed to try to generate some income.
Over the past few years we’ve met people from all walks of life; from families with teenage girls who just want to spend two weeks relaxing in the sun and topping up their tans, to intrepid, elderly adventurers who walk for hours a day through the country parks.
It wouldn’t be fair to name our favourite guests of all time, but we fondly remember a family with two children, and the eight year old girl was in her element. Even the day she got bitten about twelve times in the night by a mosquito, she still came down the next morning to walk the dogs with a smile on her face; she was so proud of her bites. The girl was also the only person in the world I have ever met that owned an axolotl (an aquatic salamander native to North America).
Sadly, the guests before this family had been some of our hardest. Not because the people weren’t lovely, because they were, but because circumstances occurred that made it difficult for all concerned. I’m going to tell the story, but of course I’ve changed their names, and I hope if they read this, they won’t take offence about the way I have written it.
The new family arrived, and we went through our normal welcome repertoire; drinks, a snack and a ‘Meet the Animals’ tour. The parents were looking for a relaxing break and somewhere where the kids could play in the pool and chill out for two weeks. The younger of the boys, John, liked animals, and the older boy, Adam, was quieter, preferring to spend time on his lapto
p. The one thing they were both adamant about was how much they loved the pool.
After a couple of days we went out to Montoro and on our return Simon and Sarah came to see us.
“We are a little bit worried,” they said to us. “John’s come out in a rash from the swimming pool. He does sometimes get a prickly heat rash in the summer, so it might just be that.”
“OK,” I said. “Well, we have to go back out tomorrow. If you like, I’ll pick up a pool testing kit from the supermarket and see what the levels are like.”
“Thanks Alan, we really appreciate that.”
The next day we were returning home, and as we got to the top of the track I realised that I’d forgotten to buy the test kit.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Lorna. “They said he gets prickly heat, it’s probably just that.”
We’d been home for about five minutes when Sarah and Simon came to see us again.
“How’s John today?” I asked them.
“It’s got worse,” they said. “Today when he jumped in the pool he started screaming, and his skin was blotching. I don’t think we can use the pool until this is sorted out. Did you buy the test kit?”
“No, I forgot. I’m so sorry it’s got worse. I’ll go out and get one now. We need to know what’s going on.”
I was a little confused. The pool was looking the cleanest I’d seen it in ages and although I must admit I had been a little remiss in testing the water quality, we’d never had a problem like this before. Only days before Lorna and I had spent the whole day in the pool.
I shot out to the supermarket and bought a water testing kit. When I got back to the pool it showed that the levels were indeed out. The pH level was low and the total alkalinity (never heard of it) was zero. It looked like we had found our problem.
A search on the Internet found that bicarbonate of soda can be used to increase the level of alkalinity, so after driving all the way back to Montoro again, we bought the local supermarket’s stock of bicarb. The filter was running on the pool for ages and this meant having the noisy generator on the whole time, which in turn meant money spent on petrol too. This was starting to eat into the money we had received from Simon to pay for their holiday.
After hours of filtering and bags and bags of bicarb, there was still no change in the alkalinity level. I reported back to Simon and the kids, and I promised that the following day I would go and buy some more chemicals to try and get the balance sorted out. I realised that they were missing out on the swimming pool, but hopefully they understood that we were doing all we could. In fact we offered to pay for them to either go to the town pool in Montoro every day until our pool was sorted, or we would pay for the whole family to visit a local water park for the day.
Simon and Sarah didn’t accept the offer. They said that the children just wanted to play in our pool by themselves and that was the whole reason they had chosen our property. After three days of balancing chemicals and running the generator 12 hours a day to keep the pool pump going, we had to face facts; it wasn’t working. We knocked on the door to the apartment.
“Hi, we need to talk to you about the pool. For three days now we have been trying to sort out the problem and it isn’t working,” I said to them. “I think we need to empty the pool and start again. Now, the thing is, we can empty it tonight, but it’ll take a few days to fill up. We can only pump as much water as comes into the house each day.
But as soon as there is water in the pool, even if it’s only a metre deep we would be happy for the kids to go in to cool off; within four days it should be full.”
“Ok, well I guess there is no other option,” they said.
So I started the generator and began to empty the pool. For some reason, while it’s emptying the pump goes on and off intermittently, so it took about four hours; the pool was finally empty at about 1.30am. At 7am, practically as soon as it was light, I was up, in the pool and cleaning the walls and floor to remove any possible remnants of the acidic water. Finally, I ran a hose to the pool and started the filling process.
At some point during the morning the family ventured out of the property. We were relieved, as it was the first day since they’d arrived that they had left the house and we thought that maybe they had decided to explore. While they were out we emptied our deposito, and continued running the water into the pool for as long as possible.
We had to go out into town to run some errands and on the journey Lorna asked me, “What would we have done if we lived somewhere with restricted water? We wouldn’t have been able to empty and refill the pool like this.”
“We would’ve had to buy the water in,” I replied.
When we returned home Simon was sitting waiting for us, with a forlorn look on his face.
“When we went out this morning, we saw that the pool was filling up and we hoped it would be usable when we got home. We can see that it isn’t going to be ready by the time we’ve finished our holiday. The children are devastated.”
“Erm, I don’t know what to say Simon, we did explain that it would take a few days, but we were happy for the kids to go in as soon as the water was high enough.”
“But they want to jump in and play. They aren’t going to be able to do that.”
Simon went up the stairs like a broken man, leaving Lorna and I feeling fed up; we were doing all we could.
“Why don’t we see if we can get some water delivered?” Lorna asked.
“I suppose we could. Maybe we could rescue the situation a bit for them. We’ll have spent all the money we earned for their holiday already though.”
“I don’t know what else we can do,” Lorna said.
So I got on the phone to Jorge, hoping he would know someone to phone. He phoned me back 20 minutes later.
“Someone can deliver 12,000 litres for €120 to you this evening.”
“I’ll take it,” I said and triumphantly went to tell Simon that we had arranged for some water to be delivered that evening and hopefully the pool would be ready to use again very soon.
When the delivery truck rumbled up the track it was bigger than I’d expected. I had removed some of the fences to enable a tube to be run from the truck to the pool easily. The driver turned the truck around (with difficulty) and reversed into position.
“¿Cuantos litros?” I asked.
“20,000!” he said.
“Great.” I thought that would fill the pool right up.
“¿Tubo?” The driver was asking for a pipe.
“No, no aquí.” No, not here, I replied.
So he got on the phone and sat in the cab waiting. I didn’t know what was going on. By now, Simon and Sarah and the kids had come out to watch the magic moment when the pool was filled up. Cameras were out, they had blown up the inflatables and there was an air of excitement. I went to ask the driver what was happening, and although I didn’t totally understand I thought he’d said someone was coming from Montoro with a tube.
“Don’t worry,” I relayed the message to the assembled group.
About an hour later, a van with two old men turned up; they dragged two pieces of huge plastic tube out of the van and proceeded to tape the tube to the back of the lorry using parcel tape.
Lorna and I, Simon and Sarah and the kids all stood watching. The nightmare was over we thought.
The driver banged at the hatch at the back, where the tube had been taped. Water began to flow out, slowly at first, then faster.
After a few seconds, I noticed the water had a brown tinge to it. Hoping it was just where it had settled at the bottom of the tank, we carried on watching; it got browner and browner. By the time the last drop emptied from the lorry, the pool was filled with dark, greeny-brown coloured water, populated by beetles. It looked like the water had been dragged straight from the river. I looked around at the family and Lorna in shocked disbelief. One of the men must have noticed that we all looked horrified.
“No hay problema, solo necesita producto, y perfecto,” he s
aid. No problem, it only needs a product and it will be perfect.
I went to deal with the driver and I offered him the €120 that we had been quoted.
“Pero, 20,000, no 12,000; es €170.”
I didn’t know what to do. My head was spinning, but I gave him the extra money and he left, leaving us with a pool that was unusable and a very unhappy family.
My first thought was to put the generator back on and throw some chlorine and chemicals into the pool and hope it would clear overnight, maybe settle to the bottom from where we’d be able to vacuum up the debris and it would be fine. The family trudged back into the house carrying their towels and inflatables.
The following morning I was up early again. The past few nights I’d barely slept through stress and worry and that night was no different. I was hoping to see a difference in the water, but as I turned the corner to the pool area I already knew it was a forlorn hope. Simon was there too, sitting on a sunbed staring at the pool looking sad.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to him. “I really am doing my best.”
The next idea we had was to try to locate a pool man in Montoro through Facebook. Within two hours we had a phone number and were on our way to Montoro to meet a guy named Tony. He was Portuguese and he worked at one of the local town pools. He spoke not a word of English, but had the biggest smile on his face and a bottle of magic, blue potion. Back at the house we put the generator on once again (singlehandedly keeping the local petrol station going), and Tony poured his potion into the brown mess.
“En 48 horas, perfecto!” he said. That meant that it would be clean and ready to use on the day that Simon and Sarah were leaving and we had new guests arriving. Tony stayed for an hour, and taught me a bit more about balancing the pool and using the filters properly, and by the time he was leaving, we could already see that his potion was starting to clear the water.