Mrs Faux Poo, Death and Responsibility

Yesterday, I reported on the condition of Mrs Poo and her moult and chill, and the fact she has gone into one of her hunches, facilitating the need for some indoor TLC (Tender Lovin' Chicken).

Olly, who regularly reads this blog when she probably has more constructive things to do with her time, left commiserations and a comment that suggested maybe Mrs Poo was attention-seeking.

And having been on nursing duty for two days now, I am inclined to think Olly may have a point!

Yesterday, Mrs Poo was trying to eat some of her layers pellets and corn. (And sunflower seeds that I'd mixed in, too, as a bribe). She was being a bit half-hearted in her attempts - sort of bash, bash, boink, boink, look I'm trying really hard to eat my food but it's just tooooooooo much effort, poor me, I've got a chill and I'm moulting (cough, cough!)

So I thought (having been a foster mummy to a duckling), I know, I'll mush up some layers pellets with water. It'll be easier for her to eat.

This I did and presented the resultant mush to Mrs Poo in a rather nice cut glass trifle bowl (presentation is half the battle when nursing the ill).

'What's this?' she said.
'It's layers pellets and water,' I said.
'Sugared water?' said Mrs Poo.
'No, plain water,' I said. 'But it's warm. A bit like porridge.'
'Well, ' said Mrs Poo, folding her wings. 'When my grandmother made us porridge, in the days when we all lived in the frozen wastelands of the most northern tip of rain-lashed Scotland, when we were so poor we didn't have shoes and had to eat the grass that even the sheep didn't want, when Gordon Brown was...'
'Get on with it,' I said.
'...Grandma's porridge was laced with lots of brown sugar and honey and syrup and cream,' finished Mrs Poo. And then she looked pointedly at her bowl of brown mush.
'That's an awful lot of sugar,' I said. 'Not good for your teeth.'
'Chickens don't have teeth,' said Mrs Poo.
'I'm not surprised, 'I said, 'if that's how they eat their porridge.'

Anyway, Mrs Poo deigned to give the mush a nibble and then woolfed down half the bowl. I thought I heard her burp, but she denied such unlady-like behaviour.

And this morning, when she was sitting on my lap having her water, she was looking around rather more perkily than yesterday (when she could barely keep her eyes open) AND there was a lot more flicking of the water in the nurse's eye going on, too.

'I'm not going to drip water down your beak if you keep doing that,' I said a little crossly, because although I am genuinely compassionate with the truly sick, if I suspect any lead-swinging, my fuse can shorten very dramatically. And I was getting wet.

When my younger sister, bless her, was in a semi-remission with cancer, she requested one day that I make her some scrambled egg. Okay, I said. And then she proceeded to give me very strict, very precise instructions on exactly how she liked her scrambled eggs. Okay, I said, and off I trotted to make said eggs. I did think that she could probably have made her own scrambled eggs, especially as she was perfectly capable of walking, brandishing a spoon and giving bossy instructions but serious illness and filial responsibility for one's younger siblings plus a guilt complex makes you agree to do things that sometimes you perhaps wouldn't.

Anyway, I made the eggs as per instructions, took them to my sister and sat with her as she ate them.
As she placed the fork on the empty plate, she looked at me and said, 'Well, they were all right, I suppose, but not the same as Mum makes.'

What I really wanted to say was 'well, make your own effing scrambled eggs next time,' but of course, I didn't because that would have been deemed unsympathetic. And we were both very young at the time and lacking in social maturity and patience.

Is Mrs Poo really as ill as she is suggesting? When I leave her for a rest, does she immediately kick back her heels, switch on the telly and reach for a jumbo sized bottle of Tizer and box of Milk Tray?

I don't know. But I'm old enough now to be patient in my care of her until I am a happy she is properly on the mend i.e when she tries to rip the skin off my fingers.

As she sat on my lap this morning being stroked and cossetted, I was struck that her gingery blonde feathers were exactly the same colour as my sister's hair.

No, I thought. She wouldn't have come back as a chicken, would she? I mean, if you're going to be re-incarnated, you'd choose something a bit more glam than a chicken, wouldn't you?

Mrs Poo looked up at me with a bright and sparky eye.

'Yes,' she said. 'Who'd be a chicken in this household?'