Chicken Run

We are sitting around the kitchen table, arguing about homework and whether courgettes are an acceptable vegetable to serve to children.
"Personally, I think it is child cruelty, forcing us to eat those things," says Small Boy disgustedly, poking his meal with a fork.
"Why does Dad grow them? They're rank!" exclaims Daughter. "You should feed them to the chickens instead."
"The chickens!" shouts Small Boy, leaping from the table, sending knives, forks and discarded rondels of green vegetable cascading down on to the floor.
The dog immediately wakes from her deep sleep and pounces on the food to wolf it down, only to wrinkle her nose in disgust before spitting everything back out again.
"See?" says Daughter triumphantly. "Even she won't eat them." [Dramatic pause] "And she eats human sick."
"Thank you," I say pointedly. "And - er - where you do think you're going?" I call after Small Boy, who is hurriedly cramming his feet into his wellies, a look of consternation on his pink little face.
"Look outside! It's getting dark! The chickens are out!" With these three sentences thrown at me in disdain, he has disappeared.
Daughter and I sit in silence contemplating the courgettes.
Small Boy is back in under a minute, out of breath and crying, "She's gone! Titch has gone!"

Titch, the Lavender Pekin, has had her beady little eyes set on adventure since the day she came to live with us. I am convinced that her cute fluffy exterior is simply a cover for what is in fact an extremely wily character. She certainly is proof, if needed, that it is often the more surprising things in life that come in small packages. The other night I was on the phone when I noticed a strange grey shape perched on top of the bird feeder. I approached the window cautiously and found myself eye to eye with the Pekin who was roosting precariously and clearly very much out of her comfort zone, two metres off the ground. She was even further from her comfort zone once I had screeched and dropped the phone, causing her to fall off her perch in fright.

Small Boy is beside himself at this latest catastrophe.
"You have to help me look for Titch!" he urges, hurtling back out into the dusk.
Daughter's normal reaction to all chicken-related conversation is to roll her eyes heavenward and withdraw to another room to text about the weirdness of her family to anyone who will take note. But she is no bird-brain and knows a good opportunity when she sees it. She pushes her courgettes away and rushes out after Small Boy to help search for the errant chook.
We run around the garden, searching under bushes and in trees, but all we find are trails of feathers down the far end of the garden near the hole in the ground which we have long suspected is a fox's den.
After a tearful bathtime, during which we are subjected to a "This is Your Life"-style slideshow of Titch's Best Moments on Small Boy's video camera, we agree that we have Learnt A Lesson and will not be leaving the chicken run open in the evening again.

At dawn I hear Small Boy clatter out to the chicken run to dutifully tend to his two remaining chooks. I sadly plod to the bathroom to begin the mammoth task of sticking my face on (a task made monumental by lack of sleep and chicken-related anxiety attacks), and am approaching completion when a little voice says, "Look who I've found!"
Small Boy is standing in the doorway, a tiny, grey, shivering bird clutched in his grubby hands, a bright beaming smile on his face. "Titch! She was hiding all the time!"
We are all delighted and cluster round the chicken as though she is a sacred thing. "She must have had a guardian angel looking after her," I gush dramatically.
"Yeah, a Kung Fu chicken guardian angel who kept the fox away with karate chops!" enthuses Small Boy, waving the bird dangerously around his head.
Knowing a chicken's propensity for pooing at regular intervals, I swiftly remove boy and bird from the cream-carpeted room and usher them downstairs.
Psycho Cat is already in the kitchen, stalking along the work tops. She is very unamused: the morning's excitement has meant that she has had to wait all of ten minutes for her breakfast to be served. She perks up on seeing Titch in Small Boy's arms though, and the look on her face says all too plainly what is going through her fiendish feline brain: "At last, some real food for a change."
"Quick, take Titch outside and shut her in the run," I say urgently, pouncing on the cat and holding her in a head lock.
I somehow think it would take more than an innate feathery feistiness, or indeed a Kung Fu chicken guardian angel, to protect the poor Pekin from a Whiskas-deprived Psycho Cat.
In any case, I'm not taking chances.