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Articles - Ticket to Veganistan ( Shirey's Story)

There are as many formulas for how the animals arrive here as ideas that you could have. Commonly, people just phone and ask if we’ll take them, sometimes they’re dumped over the fence or left at the gate but one of the most unusual efforts happened recently.

It was early morning and I was just thinking about getting out of bed when I heard a distressed chicken sound. Our chickens had been safely locked away the night before so it was odd to hear one so close by. I jumped up, got dressed in a panic, falling over myself trying to get my jeans on, and went out to have a look. There was nothing at all to see outside. No noise, no feathers, no chicken. I was stumped. I had a look around and it wasn’t until I got level with my little goose house that it started up again. There was something unusual inside and it wasn’t in there the night before so what was going on?

I opened the door and out lurched a chicken that I’d never clapped eyes on before follow by the usual pair of geese in a fluster. The mystery chicken had long legs and a lanky body and resembled road-runner as it circuited the garden. It was clearly a game bird from fighting stock (the boxing gloves on a piece of string round it’s neck gave the game away) and the poor thing was terrified by its ordeal. Can you imagine going to bed in your own home one night and waking up shut in with a bunch of strangers in a totally different location? I don’t know who was most surprised, me or the chicken!

God only knows how it found itself in with the geese since their house is within my fenced garden. We can only assume that someone wanted to give it a chance of a life and so broke into our sanctuary during the night and put it somewhere safe. It’s kind of like reverse burglary! It’s not nice to know that someone’s been here but at least they cared enough to save the bird.

The bird has turned out to be a hen and has chummed up with a cockeral. They spend their days together but come the evening, for some reason, she has decided to roost in our house and he goes home (obviously very well brought up chickens!). So, every night we have to wait for her to settle and then place her back into her little chicken house and every morning we let her out and she does it all over again. We have a lot of unpredicted visitors but last Christmas was the maddest.

It was just good fortune that I sat there, Christmas Eve night, and prepared all the lovely veggies for the big day. We had just about everything that was going, (parsnips, carrots, peas, broccoli, swede, potatoes..shall I go on? Oh, alright then!…beans, cabbage…. ) and the pots and pans were lined up and ready to provide us with our vegan feast.
Christmas morning arrived, the dogs were let out and we had ten minutes of peace to open our presents. Pure bliss. Well, it would have been pure bliss had we not wandered out of the room and found a horse in the kitchen, eating the veg. I’ve got to confess that it wasn’t a big horse. A big horse would have been just plain silly. A shire horse wouldn’t have even fitted through the door. This was just a small, festive horse. It made me think that now we have a deer then just about anyone could turn up this year. We’ll be sort of service station for Santa. I can just imagine going into the kitchen in the wee small hours of Christmas morning and there he is, all in red, slouched in the chair, holding his belly. “Got a glass of water?” he whimpers. “I’m going to have a head on me in the morning. I’ve only been out for a couple of hours and I’ve already downed 30 gallons of sherry and ten million mince pies.” - Poor old Santa!

Anyway, luckily for me the little festive horse had only rummaged about and found the unprepared vegetables in a bag on the side. He was pleased with his find, I wasn’t too disappointed at the loss and a wonderful Christmas was had by all.