'What the hell are you doing in THERE.' I shout. It's a constant battle to herd the chooks where I want them to go instead of eating the plants I would like to eat myself. The chickens can be utter assholes.
'Um, eating stuff? As we are designed to do?' says the aloof chook. She says it under her breath. She's had nothing but contempt for me since we got her. She rarely looks at me and runs a mile if I come near her. I get it. I get anxious too.
'Yes, but you get fed grain - two sorts, I might add - and that food is for ME'.
'Sorry. But - kale, you know? It's good shit.' says the gold laced wyandotte. She spends a lot of time yelling at me. She's not mad, she just thinks that if she screams at me I'll just throw oats at her or something. 'CAN YOU PASS ME THE SILVERBEET?' she bagurks. 'OR SOME OF THAT TOAST. OH MAN. TOAST.'
I tell her to fuck off or I'll lock her up. I have a headache and no one likes a shouty chook. She screams for a bit longer and then races off to another part of the garden. She always has such FOMO. She's the one to grab spaghetti and run like hell with the others chasing her.
One of the plymouths has stayed behind. She doesn't give up, but she persists politely.
'Um - excuse me?' she says, looking at me with her dinosaur eyes. 'I don't suppose you have a little bit of toast? The others won't know, and I've been ever so patient.'.
'Ok but shush, dear Mother Clucker. I don't want the others to come running. It's my brekky and I'm hungry too you know.' Motherclucker is six years old and I have a soft spot for her. I give her half of my toast. She has me well trained.
In the evening, when I come home from work, they screech at me only if they've run out of food. If they see me in the garden late afternoon, they get excited as they think I'm about to give them some free range mix, which they love. You can always get a chicken back into the coop with some good food, even if they'd rather be out. I love giving them some fresh straw and some grains and listening to them make happy sounds. I imagine it's like a cat's purr - it's distinctively happy, like you know they're super happy.
When you've been around chickens a while, you start understanding their speech. You know when there's a hawk overhead, when they're happy, grumpy or asking for something. They've even made AI interpret chicken chatter to help farmers have happy hens. So whilst they might not understand us, we can sure as hell understand them, if we listen. Did you know roosters might sqawk at an aerial predator when there are hens around to warn, but not otherwise, because that just alerts the bird to their location? They are far bigger communicators than you'd believe. You don't actually need AI to understand chickens - you just need to observe them. A lot.
It's true for any animal.
🐔🐔🐔
Speaking of talking animals, I've been reading this delightful comic and tragic book in the glorious sunshine on the weekend - Mammoth, by Chris Flynn. It's narrator is a 13,000 year old American mastodon who was dug up in the 1800's. Initially they put his tusks the wrong way around to make him look more threatening.
The conversations between the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a pterodactyl, a prehistoric penguin, and the severed hand of an Egyptian mummy and the mastoon are hilarious and poignant. They're in a natural history museum in Manhattan, talking about how they came there and what had happened over the years since they'd been dug up.
The story itself is a vehicle for talking about history and ideas about science and religion, and how they have changed over the years, including diversions to Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany.
The death of the mammoth is a very sad tale that stayed with me a long time. He relates how he and the rest of his mammoth herd tried to escape a valley with the last of the dire wolfs, desperate to get away from the two legged creatures who were hunting them. As they travelled, they battled with the tribe, slaughtering as they were slaughtered. The thundering of the escape loosened an ice flow which swept into the valley and killed all within. Thus the book also reveals our role in the destruction of the natural world. I'm still reading so I'm hoping there is some hope in the sadness. There's enough comedy to balance it, however.
“Can I jump in? Bro. Take a breather. I knew this was going to be a big story. I didn’t realise it would be so boring.
I’m sorry you feel that way, T-bataar.
I don’t mean to be rude, but a couple more jokes wouldn’t go amiss.
I want to hear about your adventures, Mammut.
Not all this stale historical jibber jabber.” - Mammoth, Chris Flynn
Clearly, Flynn has made this historical story anything but boring - the voices of the dead in the museum might touch on subjects such as racism, slavery, extinction, asteroids, dinosaurs, politics and so on, but it does it in a humourous way.
“Did you spend much time on the ground? That would be azhdararchidae."
"Big fella, bit of a temper on him, takes ages to lift off?"
"So I believe."
"Yep, eaten one of them. Didn’t much care for it. Those leathery wings get stuck in your teeth."
"Does everything have to be discussed relative to your gullet, T?"
"How can you truly know someone if they haven’t passed through your digestive tract?” - Tyrannosaurus bataar to Pterodactylus antiquus re pterosaurs: Mammoth by Chris Flynn
Flynn's clearly responded to 
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