7th July – On the Driveway with the Lead Piping

The next day followed much the same pattern but without the early morning raspberry delivery.  As the sun was sinking low in the late afternoon sky I heard the crunch of the gravel on the driveway, and I flopped off the hammock to greet the family. They were tired, and Anne-Marie was on proper crutches, but she looked relieved. I was surprised to receive little by way of thanks from the farmers for having held the fort, but I supposed they had a lot on their minds, and put the disgruntled thoughts to the back of my own.  

Encouraged by my success of the evening before I decided to help by going to put the birds to bed again. I didn’t feel the need to say where I was going; I just went. Perhaps the cockerel could sense my confidence and mistook it for arrogance, or perhaps he was just in a bad mood from being hen-pecked all day. In any case, he was on the defensive. I lasted less than a minute standing at the coop. He flew at me, beak aimed at my forehead, talons towards my eyes. I screamed. The sound startled him momentarily. I ran ten metres or so back down the drive, which had worked as a balm to his territorial instinct on my first night of singing lullabies. Not this time. I turned to see a flurry of feathers running towards me. I remember thinking that it was odd that he wasn’t flying. And soon after that thought, my own flight instinct kicked in and I ran hell for leather down the drive, whimpering. At some point I looked back over my shoulder at the ever-nearing bird and lobbed the lead piping in his direction, which probably saved me from severe disfigurement because he was distracted by it for a few seconds, ripping at it mercilessly and fruitlessly. In those few seconds I sprinted the distance to the house and slammed the door behind me. I was still whimpering. I wasn’t sure I had ever whimpered in my life until then.

Not very helpfully, Anne-Marie and Pierre found it all mildly amusing, and probably wondered how on earth this inept English girl had survived the past three days. I supposed it was amusing from their point of view, or it was until they sent Juan out to put the birds to bed properly; he came back crying with an open gash across his stomach. Suddenly the ineptitude of the WWOOFer didn’t seem quite so amusing after all.