A Likely Tale, Lad

by Mike Pannett

  Animal Farm

  Living in a house with acres of land around us presented Mum and Dad with an unforeseen problem: how to say ‘no’ when we told them that, as well as the cat, the dog and the horses, we wanted geese, and ducks and hens. And while we’re at it, how about a few guinea-fowl?

  They’d seen the girls knuckle down to looking after the horses; they’d seen me mucking out Honk’s pen, day after day until her demise, so they knew we were up to it.

  Neither could they say, as they had at the old house, ‘But where will you put them all?’ There was more land out there than anybody knew what to do with. On a foggy day you couldn’t see the far end of it. There was space for cricket, and football, and the horses, and any amount of livestock.

  So the invasion – and the fun – began.

  It started with the guinea-fowl, George and Mildred – two plump birds with pea-sized heads and even smaller brains, or so we thought. The names suited them: just like the characters in the TV sitcom they were raucously loud, and always seemed to be arguing with each other or with any other creature – animal or human – that was foolish enough to approach them. Petra certainly gave these new arrivals a wide berth.

  Having said that, they were easy enough to look after, once we’d given up trying to control their movements. The trick, we discovered, was to leave well alone. If they wanted to spend the day looking for bugs in the long grass down the orchard, fine. If they decided to spend the day on the roof, clinging to the ridge tiles as the wind tugged at their silver-grey feathers, so be it. It was their choice. If they wanted to set off down the middle of the road, dodging the traffic as they pecked around for bits of spilled corn – well, it was their lives on the white line. They were, quite simply, cussed. Try to persuade them to go somewhere that would suit them better and they’d head in the opposite direction.

  Just think about trying to grab them and they’d be off, not so much running as sprinting. These birds were lightning-fast. If, by some miracle, you did manage to get your hands around them they’d slip away and fly up a nearby tree. They liked trees, particularly the old ash down at the far end of the garden, and would spend long hours up there, doubtless laughing at us as we searched for them in all the obvious places.

  The only time you could guarantee to find them was when it got dark. To start with, every evening as the light faded we’d scour the yard and the fields, trying to find them and nearly always failing. Then, when we went to lock up the hens, there they’d be, back in the little pen we’d made for them and settling down for the night. They seemed to look at you as if to say, what was all that fuss about? Here we are.

  People used to ask us why we kept them when they seemed so much trouble, and all we could do was shrug and say, ‘Well, look at them.’

  There was no denying the fact: they were very pretty birds. When they wandered out onto the road, passing motorists would slow down to gaze at them. Some would even get out and photograph them. More than once we had a knock at the door and found some stranger asking if there was any chance of us raising chicks. The answer to that was always ‘no’. For some reason Mildred never seemed to lay any eggs – at least, not where we could find them.

  But Mildred’s failings in that department didn’t bother us. We had a flock of hens of various shapes and sizes – all of them named – and one proud cockerel who strutted about like some Arab potentate with his own personal harem. His feathers were a splendid mixture of gold, brown and black, topped by a bright red comb. We were never quite sure what breed he was but after some discussion we came to the conclusion that he must be a Rhode Island Red.

  Once our little flock had settled in they started laying … and laying, and laying. And every time we went to collect the eggs the cockerel felt it was his duty to attack us, making a dive for our ankles with his beak. The only way to distract him was to go in with a bit of feed in a bucket. You could generally rely on his appetite overcoming his instinct for protecting his flock.

  We fed them a mixture of household scraps and proper layers’ mash that Dad brought home from town in large paper sacks. Towards evening time we scattered a few handfuls of corn around the run so that the birds would fill their crops before settling down. From time to time Dad told us to scatter a bit of grit, which they needed to break down the corn.

  We kept a bucket in the kitchen for potato peelings, cabbage trimmings, leftovers and the like, and every morning we had to mix the contents with enough dry feed and water to fill the six-foot length of cast-iron guttering that served as a feeding trough. The rule was to go out first thing, fill the trough, then open the henhouse door and retreat. We learned the hard way that standing in the way of a stroppy cockerel with vicious spurs and fourteen hungry hens with sharp beaks was asking for trouble.

  Not surprisingly, there were mornings when you’d wake up, bleary-eyed, and go through the routine on auto-pilot. That’s when mistakes occurred.

  Just my luck that my turn fell on a wild and windy morning when the rain was lashing down. It was the first day of a new school term. I rolled out of bed, put on the new school trousers that Mum had bought me, threw my dressing gown on and stumbled downstairs. In the kitchen I grabbed the bucket of leftovers. It was an unappetising mess: in amongst it I could identify a tangle of leftover spaghetti, some lumpy custard and the remains of a boiled beetroot. You lucky birds, I thought, as I stirred in the layers’ mash and topped it up with warm water. Then I stepped into my school shoes, also brand new, and opened the kitchen door.

  Outside, and still not fully awake, I went down the yard, entered the run and opened the door of the henhouse. Out they all trotted, with the cockerel in the lead, swarming around my legs as I approached the trough.

  As I poured out the contents of the pail I realised my mistake. The birds were all scrabbling over my feet or perched on the edge of the trough; some were in it, and, as I tilted the bucket, one of them managed to get inside. I turned the pail upside-down. Out came the bird, covered in food, the others clambering over her to get at the slimy gobs of custard that hung from her bedraggled feathers. The cockerel, meanwhile, had grabbed one end of a piece of spaghetti and was tugging at it. A big black hen had hold of the other end, and they settled down to a tug-of-war.

  Meanwhile two other hens had discovered the custard and were wading through it, picking out the lumps, which they then shook, splattering my clean trousers and polished shoes with dollops of yellow matter flecked purple with beetroot juice.

  Back at the house I got no sympathy at all, just gales of laughter from the girls and a stern rebuke from Mum.

  ‘Michael Richard Pannett, what have you done to those nice new trousers I put out for you? And … just look at those shoes. Really! Is there any point in my trying?’

  It wasn’t all trouble, having the hens. There were, of course, the eggs – once we devised a safe way of collecting them. When it became apparent just how aggressive the cockerel was, Dad built an extension to the henhouse, a whole row of nesting boxes which could be opened from the outside. That way we didn’t have to disturb them – or the cockerel. Lifting a plump warm hen off a bed of clean straw and finding a couple of pale brown eggs under her is one of those pleasures, like home-baked bread, fresh from the oven, that you never tire of – and never forget.

  Sadly, it wasn’t always that simple. Most of the year the chickens ran free, and that meant that they’d occasionally go missing. It’s only natural for a hen to try to hatch out her eggs and raise a brood of youngsters, and they soon worked out that that wasn’t going to happen if they kept laying in the boxes. Every now and then we’d find one of them under a hedge, sitting on half a dozen eggs.

  Sometimes one would disappear, then show up a week or two later with half a dozen fluffy little chicks around her ankles. We kids were enchanted, of course, but Dad used to stroke his chin and stare at them. We soon learned what was on his mind. As they grew, which they did rapidly, he’d stare a bit more, and before long he’d be able to distinguish
those that were hen birds from those that weren’t. Those that weren’t were allowed to grow to a certain size, then ended up on the dining table.

  Looking back, I suppose we must have saved ourselves a lot of money with all this livestock. And we made a bit too, selling eggs on the roadside, along with the excess produce from Dad’s vegetable garden and greenhouse. Customers put their money in a big round biscuit tin, the honesty box, and we’d collect it every night.

  Dad spent a lot of time down the garden, or in his glasshouse. If I couldn’t find him in his workshop and wanted to speak to him, it was a fair bet that’s where he’d be, surrounded by pots and seed packets, sometimes sneaking a crafty cigarette when he thought nobody was about.

  As far as Mum and the rest of us were concerned he’d given up smoking, and to be fair we never saw him doing it around the house. But he must have found it hard, especially as nearly everybody else smoked in those days. I don’t think he ever fooled Mum, however: it was just a case of ‘out of sight and out of mind’.

  I think Dad’s dream would have been complete self-sufficiency. He took enormous pride in sitting down to a Christmas dinner of home-produced food. The spuds, the parsnips, the sprouts, carrots and leeks would all be home-grown, and the goose most years. With the help of a little paraffin heater he’d even manage to produce a few lettuces in midwinter, and every year when his tomato harvest was over he’d put the last few green ones in a drawer, wrapped in newspaper. Then he’d pull them out, red and shiny, and serve them up in one of the best china bowls for our Boxing Day tea.

  Mum was well pleased with all this free produce. Apart from the business with Honk, there was only one thing they disagreed over, and that was the geese that arrived one day. They were noisy and they were aggressive, she complained. Just the job, Dad liked to say, for keeping any intruders away – and then he’d remind us that our Roman ancestors had used them as guards.

  These geese didn’t let us down. As soon as a visitor or a delivery man appeared around the back they’d kick off, honking and hissing, and, if we’d left the gate open, charging their victim.

  Duncan was the villain of the piece. He was one big beast of a gander, all neck, beak and testosterone. He once got Dad cornered in his own greenhouse. Luckily, Dad had the hosepipe connected up and was able to fight his way out behind a fierce jet of ice-cold water.

  Once in a while, to our great delight, the whole gaggle would take flight, flapping in perfect V-formation down Crayke High Street, ‘like a flight of Lancaster bombers’, as Dad put it.

  We never knew how Dad dispatched the Christmas goose every year. Or geese, I should say, because he generally sold one or two to neighbours. I’d seen him break many a young cockerel’s neck – indeed, he’d taught me how to do it, and I got to be quite adept – but the goose was a different proposition. I never found out for sure, but I think an axe was involved. Whatever the case, we were generally presented with a row of headless corpses hanging from a beam in one of the outhouses and told to pluck them.

  The first time we were given the job we thought it would be fun. We couldn’t wait to get started, and of course had no time to listen to Mum’s advice – something about hot water. No, we were in far too much of a hurry, hatching plans to make pillows or eiderdowns and sell them at the gate. We waded in as children will, and started yanking fistfuls of feathers and soft white down from the lifeless bodies.

  It wasn’t long before we were standing knee-deep in the stuff. The air in the shed was full of it, and we were spitting feathers off our lips, waving them away from our faces. They stuck to our clothes and hair, and worked their way into our ears and up our noses, making us sneeze. When Mum came to the door to see how we we’re getting on, she couldn’t help but laugh at us.

  ‘What a sight! You look like four Eskimos lost in a blizzard. Come on,’ she said, ‘outside with you. Let’s do what I told you in the first place.’

  We cleaned ourselves up as well as we could and trudged back to the house, where she boiled up two big kettles of water. Then we carried them back to the shed and she poured the contents over the partly plucked birds.

  ‘Now, isn’t this a lot easier?’ she said, pulling out handfuls of sodden feathers and dumping them on the table. Silence. Then, ‘Well, what do we say?’

  ‘Mum knows best,’ we chorused.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Mum knows best. And in future, just do what I tell you. There’s usually a sound reason for it.’

  Once you have animals living on the premises you have to be on the look-out for pests and predators. Whenever we suspected a rat was sniffing around the henhouse, Dad would lay poisoned bait in a clay land-drain and tuck it away under a board. We learned to keep the feed well covered up to keep the sparrows and starlings away, but of course the hens soon scattered it.

  As it happened, the only one of our animals to suffer at the hands of a rat was our cat, Purdy. Purdy was a little demon when it came to catching mice, and was also an enthusiastic ratter. Perhaps she was too enthusiastic. One morning she appeared at the back door limping, and holding one of her front legs at a strange angle. It was badly swollen, and when we took her to the vet, she said that Purdy had been bitten by a rat. The wound had gone septic, and she needed to amputate the affected limb. After the operation Purdy changed. She still hunted mice, and she still purred like crazy, but she took to nudging you rhythmically as she purred, and dribbling. What the connection was we couldn’t figure out, but it meant nobody wanted her snuggling up to them on the sofa.

  But rats weren’t our biggest worry. What we most feared was a fox getting into the hen run. We knew there was a fox living nearby, and suspected there might be family of them. We’d often hear the vixen barking in the night, and our suspicions were confirmed when we spotted a pair of them, and two tiny cubs, making their way to the rabbit warren that lay across the fields behind our property. We were extra-vigilant after that, making quite sure the hens were all locked up as soon as dusk fell. Quite how the fox got into the run was a mystery, but get in it did.

  It’s not a pleasant experience to come out on a morning to feed your hens and find their remains scattered all over the ground. For some reason a fox doesn’t always take just what it can carry off. They seem to get caught up in the excitement of killing and will wipe out an entire flock. Some people think it’s the noise of the hens squawking that panics them.

  What I found that morning was truly sickening. There were feathers and body parts and whole dead fowl all over the place, and a solitary confused hen, trotting around and clucking in an agitated way. It looked genuinely distressed, and to our knowledge never laid another egg.

  How the fox had got into the henhouse remained a mystery, but the door was swinging in the breeze, and when I ventured inside there was more carnage. Had we forgotten to lock up? Had somebody tampered with the latch? Or had the fox worked out how to undo it? We never came up with an answer.

  Dad took it philosophically. Either that or he did an excellent job of appearing to.

  ‘These things happen,’ he said. ‘It’s Nature. You just have to accept it and carry on.’

  So we re-stocked, fitted a stronger catch on the door, strengthened the fence all the way round and hoped that the local hunt would round up Mr Fox and his family. We all benefited hugely from keeping all the animals. It taught us a lot about responsibility. It taught us respect for Nature. And it taught us to cope with the ups and downs that the natural world throws at you.

  Staying Warm

  Dad was standing in the kitchen with a fourteen-pound sledgehammer in one hand and a cold chisel in the other. He had on a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a flat cap and a woolly jumper. We knew this meant business. It was what he called his battle dress, and when he put that on there was always some sort of excitement in the wind, usually involving loud noises.

  ‘The first thing I’ll need to do,’ he said, ‘is have this thing out.’

  He was looking at the old range. He and Mum had tried
to make it work when we first moved in, but all we got was a house full of smoke and some industrial-strength language.

  Since then it had sat there, silent apart from the occasional sound of loose mortar falling down the chimney and pinging off its cast-iron casing.

  ‘Might make a few pounds from the scrap man,’ Dad added as he tapped it with his hammer.

  Its day had come. Dad was going to demolish it. Another step in his campaign to make the house warmer. We all thought that was a good thing. When we moved in Beech House was a big, draughty place with rattling windows, ill-fitting doors, and no heat source other than the open fire in the living room. And keeping that fire in overnight was a constant battle. So his plan to install our first central heating system was good news. The bad news was, the house was going to get a lot colder first as he opened up holes in the chimney-breasts, the floorboards and the walls.

  That was the year, too, when we all kept a potty under our bed, Mum having decided that it was simply too cold for us to be trailing outside to the toilet. So that was another morning job, creeping downstairs trying not to spill the contents.

  But now it was all going to be different. It would, however, take a little time. Dad looked at Mum.

  ‘Sorry, but there’s going to be a lot of banging and crashing,’ he said.

  I had no idea why he was apologising. I couldn’t imagine anything I’d rather do on a Saturday morning than help him smash the place up.

  ‘I reckon most of this chimney-breast’ll have to come out too. But I’ll re-use the bricks, so they won’t be wasted.’

  I paused, halfway through my Shreddies. This was getting more interesting by the minute.

  ‘I can help,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be a demolition man when I grow up.’

  Before Dad could answer, Mum said, ‘Do you really have to? It’s going to make a horrible mess.’ She sighed. ‘I mean, why can’t you get the builders in? Other people do.’