The chicken and I
(Me holding Pete’s bantam cockerel: Bangkok)
This cheeky little devil has been waking me up every morning, probably at some very early hour; I’m always far too bleary eyed to check the time of these one sided conversations from outside. He stands atop a large plant pot in the rooftop garden, a couple of metres away from me, behind a pane of glass and crows. He does it several times each hour, the number of cries varies, depending how much he feels he needs to assert himself. Generally, it seems to be frequent.
I think I’ve said before that having a maid is very common in Asia, the maid here is Burmese and her name, Nok, means ‘bird’. However she doesn’t seem to have an affinity with this particular character; she has to constantly battle the chickens as they attempt to enter the house. The reason I’m holding him is that he disturbed our breakfast by breaking in and clucking around the table. Nok attempted to catch him, but he eluded her grasp and ended up in Pete’s hands and then mine. Underneath all the pomp and feathers, he’s very light and little. At this point he was making grumpy little whining noises and when I sat him outside, he performed a little twirling dance to distract me, followed by another attempt to get inside.
