A Disturbance of Feral Chickens

 

by Pa Rock

Former Chicken Rancher

Domesticated animals that are abandoned or escape their bondage and revert to a wild state are often referred to as "feral."  It is not uncommon for people in rural settings, such as myself, to encounter feral cats and dogs - and occasionally the wild hog, but feral chickens, fairly defenseless creatures that can easily be preyed upon by many other animals as well as humans, are more of a rarity.  I have friends who live in another part of rural Missouri who had wild chickens visit their homestead in the woods for several years, but eventually they moved on or were "preyed" out of existence.

There was a story in several on-line sources this past week about a group of feral chickens in a rural English setting that were upsetting some of the area residents.  One of the stories even referred to the encounters between the chickens and their human neighbors as an "attack of the feral chickens."  After perusing what I could find on the story, I found no evidence of an "attack," but it definitely was a tale of two nuisance populations colliding.

The idyllic village where this situation is occurring is a place called Snettisham, and it is located in the county of Norfolk, less that sixty miles from Cambridge.  There is an area of common woods near Snettisham where a large flock of one hundred or so feral chickens have lived for some time, apparently without upsetting too many of the locals.  But now new people are moving to town, rich folks from Cambridge who are buying up the cheap land, building nice homes, and pretending to be landed gentry.  The new arrivals, however, have issues with the wild chickens.

They are complaining about the constant clucking, and the fact that the roosters start crowing around four o'clock in the morning - like clockwork!  The monster chickens are also scratching in their well tended gardens and causing their gardeners all kinds of extra bother.  Once word got out about the chicken situation, thanks to the public whining of the rich folk who were moving in and rewriting the community standards, a tourist boomlet developed of people who wanted to see the marauding chickens for themselves, so the indignant owners of the stylish new estates had them to deal with as well.  The tourists thought it would be great fun to feed the chickens, so they threw down all manner of food and trash, some of which the chickens enjoyed and the remainder of which drew rats.

Now the rats, the ones with four legs, are far more plentiful than the feral chickens, and the other rats, the ones with two legs who live in the expensive new houses, are getting their first taste of real life in the country and praying for the return of a stable government, something like the country had under the reign of Henry VIII, for example.

And the clucking and crowing continue!