Help!!

So, I arrived home from work today, thinking I ought to get out and dig the snow from the driveway before Andy gets home. Our drive is on a slope which can be tricky to negotiate when there is snow and ice around. Our neighbour across the road was out with his shovel freeing his driveway, and when I mentioned that I was about to dump my school and shopping bags and do the same, he said 'I'll do it for you,' and before I could stop him he'd shot across the road and started clearing the snow. He brushed aside my protestations. 'It's what neighbours do for each other, isn't it?' he said.

Bless him!

Off I went to the back garden, to do a pre-sunset chicken check.

'Hello girls!' I said. 'I've brought you a bed-time lettuce.'
'That's nice,' said Mrs Pumphrey. 'I like a bit of bed-time lettuce.'
'It's the tryptophan,' said Mrs Slocombe. 'Helps get you off to sleep.'
'Where's Miggo?' I said, looking around the grounds of Cluckinghen Palace. 'Laying a late egg?'

I opened the pod. No sign of Miggo.

'Mrs Miggins!' I called.
'Bok, bok,bok!' called Mrs Miggins.

I looked around. I could hear her. I couldn't see her.

'Bok, bok, bok,' she called again. 'I'm over here!'

And there, at the far end of the garden, where the snow was at its deepest and where no hen dared to tread, sat Mrs Miggins, stuck up to her wing pits in a snow drift and looking mightily cheesed off.

'What on earth possessed you to venture up here?' I said, wading through the drift to rescue my best girl.
'I can't turn around,' said Mrs Miggins, her beak squished up against the fence. And neither could she, for she was well and truly wodged into the snow like a well and truly wodged in thing. 'And I can't feel my feet,' she added.

Anyway, I lifted her from the drift and carried her to safe ground. 'Have some lettuce,' I said.
'Thanks,' she said, digging in like a good 'un. She wobbled a bit when I put her down, and I had a heart-stopping moment because I thought she'd been attacked by something, but no, by the time she went to bed she was fine.

'Are your nethers frozen?' I heard Mrs Slocombe ask as I shut the door to the pod for the night. The smell of eucalyptus and Vicks vapour rub permeated the air, and I could hear Mrs Pumphrey flipping pancakes, her cure-all for any shocking experience.
'My nethers are no concern of yours,' said Mrs Miggins. 'But my tush is very frosty.'

Of course, now I shall lie awake all night fretting that Mrs Miggins will come down with cold, or pneumonia, or a raging desire to go on an Artic expedition. I'm not sure how she got into the drift in the first place, or why she took it into her head to venture forth thus. But I have been keeping chickens long enough now to know that there is no rhyme or reason to these wonderful creatures and if nothing else, they keep us humans on our toes.

Oh, and I would like you all to know that my very mature, grown-up and responsible veterinary husband, aka Andy, made a snow willy at work today and left it on top of one of the other vet's cars. He had a partner in crime whose identity I shall not reveal, but really Andrew! How old are you???