‘The honey-coloured one with the funny hat,” said Myles, our youngest son. “I’m calling her Honey!” With that, we’d completed our family mission to choose a mixed flock of chickens at a rural poultry farm. And so we set off on the return journey to Melbourne with three cardboard cartons containing six ISA Brown laying hens and three pet bantams.
Since it was late in the day, the whole flock went into our fox-proof coop, with the usual settling-in biffo. Honey immediately came out on top, even with chickens twice her size who were clearly scared of her intense, don’t-mess-with-me demeanour. But next morning she relaxed a little when introduced to the new chicken run under our olive tree, and so did I. Until that afternoon, anyway, when there was a knock on our front door.
