I was reminded recently of the role chickens have played in my life when a stray one lolloped across the road ahead of me at Blackmount. I braked but there had been a time in my life when I would not have. As students we ate potatoes, cabbages and what we could run over. Feral ones are a bit of a rarity in Southland. Too many predators and a coolish and wettish climate – the same factors which have counted against the establishment of other related birds, the Californian quail, partridge and pheasant – have kept the population low.
In the
North Island, however, there are feral fowls at every roadside layby. They are a pest in parks, they probably
harbour chook diseases and they forage in the bush where they can damage new
plantings. They appear for food
whenever a car pulls up.
In Niue I
found twenty sorts of birds, the commonest of which was the chicken. The roosters started each morning
sometime between 1.52am and 2.03am.
I should know; I timed them!
Being interested in birds I enquired of the Ministry of Agriculture if
there was anyone who knew about birds.
“O yes”, said the girl, “I know the birds.” “That’s marvellous,” I said, “Can you
tell me what they are?” “Oh yes,”
she said, “They’re called
chickens.” “I’ve seen the
chickens,” I said patiently. “What
about the others?” “O yes,” she
said, “They’re the others.”
In Tonga there was a sign
‘Moa and chips’. Moa meant
chicken. The Pacific had chickens
for a thousand years – one of several food species derived from Southeast
Asia. It is natural that the name
was transferred to the new edible species in Aotearoa.
In Dunedin our scouts had a
troop chicken called George Trigwell Johnson. George wore a miniature scarf and earned
the Buk Reader badge. She was handy
for testing cooking on, for rescuing from various dangerous situations in
emergency training and for first aid.
Ever tried to put a sling on a chicken’s wing? Instead of the usual things you see on a
knotboard, scouts had to invent their own knots. One was Brian’s Cacklebend for securing
George to a peg by both legs. There
was also Jeremy’s Milo-hitch for tying a full mug to a rope so it could be
hoisted up to someone trapped in the treetops and the Warren Knot which stayed
firm if two enemy captives pulled the same way but released them if they pulled
in opposite directions.
George’s first and only
flight was as test pilot for the trebuchet. Cackling hysterically from delight or
something, she went up in a wide arc and dropped, flapping vigorously, onto the
neighbour’s roof. From a vantage
point on a park above the city we aimed the machine. A dead possum cleared the trees and the
fence. Spinning lazily and
silhouetted in the evening sky, it vanished into suburbia
below.
On a seabird count along
Oreti Beach, one of the hikers arrived with a bulging sack. “They’re chickens,” he said. “Well,” I said, delighted at his
innocence, “we don’t call them
chickens. They are shearwaters,
prions, petrels, shags and gulls.” He up-ended the sack. They were chickens. One sort of seabird is called a
chicken. These are ‘Mother Carey’s
chickens’ which is a sailors’ name for the tiny Storm petrel. They were believed to be the restless
spirits of drowned seamen. Mother
Carey was the conscience of the sea, the female equivalent of Davey Jones. Her name probably comes from Mater cara
which means caring mother.
Back to the chickens… I’ve kept odd ones. I’m not particularly fond of them and
it’s always going to be cheaper to buy eggs than to keep chooks. Some people are simply terrified of
them. Alectorophobia is fear of
chickens. “Having to hold a chicken
is my worst fear,” a friend told me.
I didn’t believe her. “It’s
your third worst fear,” I said.
Number two is appearing naked in public. Number one is appearing naked in public
whilst holding a chicken.
