"Generally speaking, man's relationship with spiders is a remarkably neutral one and, apart from the very small number of poisonous species, spiders have little apparent effect on the day-to-day life of mankind. The drastic alterations to the environment of man's farming and industrial activities are, on the other hand, having an increasingly harmful effect on many animals and plants and, consequently, spiders, which require a particular type of natural habitat in which to live and prosper." Spiders of the World, Rod and Ken Preston-Mafham

The Chickens

From rabbits to chickens.
They'd hypnotized the rabbits and now they were after the chickens.
This is my guess.
They are practising.
They are practising enchantment and bewitchment.
You ask me to what end and I must tell you I haven't a clue.
I only have irrational fears and wild dreams.
In these dreams there is always dark space and music and dancing and floating as if there were no longer any gravity. And a sort of singing. Yes, that's it, everybody and everything is singing. And it's blue and green. These are the colours of the dream.

As if things aren't bad enough at this time, what with my Ed and Frances on my mind and in my mind, along come my daughter and her boyfriend from Morocco where they've been for two months. All domestic animals should be free they say. Dogs, chickens, cats, geese must be allowed to roam freely around the farm. Anything else is an abomination. They believe in freedom. Especially for chickens they say.

Now this was quite contrary to Valerio's philosophy of life, which was quite frankly that all creatures should be locked up until it or they had earned the right to be otherwise. Which was never.

To make matters even worse, it is a time of intense building on our roof. Gigetto is the builder and roofing is his delight and specialty. Gigetto is a master of the art of turning a little repair job into a major undertaking. From his dizzy position on the roof he raises his fist in what seems to be a solidarity black power salute whenever I go out into the courtyard. He does it even when he is remote-controlling the giant crane with a hand held zapper, and I have to duck when the crane bin swings my way. I wonder why he insists on saluting me like this but I respond likewise. Such is the scene as day by day the clouds don't even bother to gather in these hot July skies and the cement dust spins around in little afternoon dust devils up the stairs and into the house. Where Ed and Frances pretend to be sleeping. But I know this to be a ruse. They are becoming ruse masters.

The scaffolding around the house is unnecessarily dense and jutting out deliberately to catch heads knees and ankles.

It's early evening and round up and put away time for the seventy-five chickens. I look up and notice the scaffolding has become a giant wrap around perch.

They are all up there, perched for the night. On the day that the scaffolding goes up; on the day daughter and b/f arrived. Maybe this has got nothing to do with my daughter's crusade for chicken liberty. Maybe they are playing safe, have caught the scent of a fox or two around at night, had decided this was the safest haven available at night. Seventy-five chickens (of which nine are cocks) perched in rows around the house at night like the pigeons in Trafalgar Square shuffling for warmth in the lessening light.

It doesn't take long to breed seventy-five chickens by the way. Work it out, all you need are five receptive hens - have you ever met a hen that wasn't? - one cock… and to not eat the eggs but buy them from the Co-op for a month.

I spend the evening in a vain attempt to dislodge the seventy-five chickens off the scaffolding and back into their pens. This goes on for a week. The week my daughter and her b/f are staying. Valerio begins to complain about the morning task of having to clear the chicken shit off his once scrupulously clean staircase, and what am I going to do about it. Me? Yes it's my presence he says that has caused all this and that (more specifically) that I've just gone along with my daughter's chicken liberation nonsense he says. He looks on the edge of a sulk and this prospect is indeed so horrendously unappealing on past form that I put the mind to work and came up with a brilliant concept. Wait a day for my daughter and b/f to leave and then kill them all, the seventy-five chickens I mean. Or maybe all but two or three and put those in a henhouse which I'd already had made by our friend Bill, a retired Chemist from Warwick who had some time on his hands and a few carpentry skills to boot.

To kill them yes, but first to catch them.

And the big problem here was that they have developed wings. Yes, yes, of course they had wings already but here I mean flying wings. A chicken with developed and trained flying wings can cover at least a hundred yards at one swoop, even more if it tries a bit harder and adds direction to the swoop.

And why had they developed flying wings you ask? Well, it was all my fault according to Valerio for allowing them to get so high up in the scaffolding at night. And when they deign to descend the next morning it was from a height of some eleven metres. And they are getting better at it by the day. They are learning to change direction simultaneously at the end of a swoop, to spin clockwise in the air and I even saw one try a loop the loop, fail, and go back and try again.

My ingenious plan is to build a large chicken wire funnel just down the slope by the mosquito pond and to herd them all together into it an hour before feeding time; catch them one at a time in the narrow end of the funnel and ring their necks. I've learned how to do this from Trotsky our sometimes gardener.

Next day, dusk in an hour, daughter gone, I prepare for my deadly deed. As much as I hate killing them I've done the sums. And seventy-five chickens will become six hundred very soon if I can't de-perch them from their nightly abode. Five hundred and eighty chicks nibbling through my vegetable patch and through the wire to Alfredo's strawberry patch. This painful thought drives me on to this even more painful act and I will dispatch ten tonight as a trial run. Yes I will. I walk into the garden to the edge of the wood where they assemble for their evening feed. But they're not there. Not one.

And Rosie calls up from her cottage below. Come and look at this she says and I run down and there they all are, perched and settled nicely in the stalle, the rooms under her house where Valerio used to keep his rabbits. And they are motionless, staring fixedly ahead and making not a cluck. But instead a sort of low hum like the sound of a far off aircraft on a summer's evening. And it's rhythmical.

The rabbits.
And now the chickens.
I'll call you in the morning, OK?