Harassed by a Chicken

It's not the first time I have been harassed by a fowl. That was when I was chased by a cockerel, screaming my head off, at the age of three. This time it was a chicken who behaved more like my pet cat, with territorial rights.

Today, I decided to go to my allotment briefly - the sun was shining, and I wanted to see if the cooch grass had won again during the winter months. Last time I posted about the allotment it looked like this:

 http://allhandmadeatdarmsallema.blogspot.com/2011/04/up-road.html

 In the Autumn, I did quite a lot of hard digging to achieve this look:

 My poor, poor fork.............

Pleasantly surprised, the ground wasn't too bad, and had not been taken over by an insidiously creeping  carpet of tough green grass and unidentified weeds with roots that go down to Hades. So... I did a little digging, then realised I was not alone - something was lurking behind me -  and scratching.

I turned and the chicken stared at me, then manoeuvred itself on to the clod of earth I was about to lift with the fork. Undeterred by levitating six inches, it clung on, beak darting in and out of the soil I was lifting. I tried moving up a bit on the patch. No way. The chicken planted one clawed foot on my boot and looked up at me, before moving on to the next patch of soil I was going to lift. This went on for some ten minutes, until I began to think one of us would get hurt ...... bets on who? So, fork put away, knocked mud off boots, and all the time the chicken fixed its beady eyes on me, while scratching and digging.  As I left, feeling distinctly harassed, it stuck its' tail in the air and stalked off to the allotment next to mine without so much as a backward glance, thank you, or forwarding address.