The Good Life
Dog zen has been proved possible, but chook zen seems a tall order.
Aword of advice to anyone contemplating getting chickens: Do Not Do It. Chickens are evil. Chickens are noisy. When one lays an egg, they all announce this momentous event with a deafening chorus that sounds like a primary school band of out-of-tune kazoo players warming up.
Our chickens are also completely mad – and maddening. We wanted wyandottes because they are beautiful – we have two silvers and two goldens – but also because I had read that they have big personalities and are prima donnas. When I told animal behaviourist Mark Vette this, he laughed like a kookaburra and said I had got what I wished for.
Our chickens have names. The idea was to name them after my girlfriends, including Janetta. Janetta objected. Did I not know she loathed and feared all birds and chickens in particular? Fine, I said. I’d get a goat and call it after her. I am not getting a goat. The chickens are enough of a handful. Instead we renamed Janetta Jacinda. The day we got them the Prime Minister announced she was having a baby, so this seemed sort of appropriate.
Also, we get to run around our property shouting, “Get the f--- out of there, you evil prime minister.” Jacinda is the boss chicken.
Vette was at our place for morning tea because he was in Masterton as part of a road tour to promote his book Dog Zen, which, as the title implies, is not about training chickens. But as he has trained a dog to drive a car, fly a plane and do Snapchat, surely he could train our chickens to behave. He has also trained birds, including pukekos, which are surely sillier than chickens.
He arrived with his entourage: his partner, Kim; his publicist, Jennifer, who is an old friend of ours; and two dogs, Reggie and Tommy. Reggie is famous. He’s the dog who flew the plane and now does Snapchat. His Snapchat sessions are designed to give a dog’s eye view of the world. This mostly involves views of bottoms and crotches. Reggie is very clever. He turns the Snapchat device on and off with his paw. I asked if he chases chickens. He doesn’t. Clever is as clever does.
I told Mark that the chickens had been eyeing up the cat flap. He said he reckoned he could train them to use it in about five minutes. He is a very bad man.
Iwasn’t convinced that chickens could be trained to do anything except create more mayhem. They like being very bad birds. They are not at all silly and that is the problem. They dug up the daffodil bulbs and the snowdrops. They pecked my punnets of broccoli to stalks within five minutes of my bringing them home. They shredded the kale and they go into the glasshouse and leap at the cherry tomato vines. My partner, Greg, spent money and time making them a beautiful dust bath. They used it as a loo and moved into the glasshouse and dug holes in the dirt where they roll about like cats and kick like devils. The first time I saw great clouds of dust flying out the door, I thought the tomatoes were on fire.
They get into the house and eat the cat’s food. I would not be a bit surprised to come home one day to find them tucked up in our bed, wearing our pyjamas and pecking at the cartoons in the New Yorker.
Vette trained the chickens to jump up on the back of the garden bench. Food was involved. He said: “I’ve got the prime minister eating out of my hand.” If he’d had more time he could have trained them to sit on his lap. I’m not sure I want them to sit on my lap. Jacinda pooped on Joanna’s head while eating out of Vette’s hand.
Ten minutes after the animal behaviourist left, the prime minister waddled bossily into the glasshouse and helped herself to a cherry tomato.
Clouds of dust flew out the glasshouse door. I thought the tomatoes were on fire.