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had the whole family coming over, which is why we felt we were rescuing 'our' birds, but
she thankfully refrained from actually wringing their necks in front of us. She most certainly
hadn't, unlike us, given them names.
The stallholder roughly picked up Tallulah and Lola, hens chosen by Samuel and Maurice,
and shoved them in a cardboard box without ceremony, the poor, obviously startled birds
hardly making a sound as they seemed resigned to their fate. Little did they know that after
a short drive they were about to reach animal paradise, where their every whim and foible
would be catered for to the detriment of co-habiting human life. I had been resigned for some
time to the extra responsibility, but had decided on a change of tack. If Natalie and the boys
really were determined to build their own ark then I had to somehow try to control its growth.
Simply putting up objections hadn't worked at all - far from it, like prohibition it had merely
sent the whole farce underground where it seemingly thrived.
Take, for example, the issue of our recently acquired rabbit. I should have seen the signs
when Maurice had asked blithely at lunch a couple of weeks earlier, just after I had returned
from a long trip abroad, 'What shall we call the rabbit?' It never occurred to me that we had,
while my back was turned, actually gained a rabbit.
When Maurice, who is innocent enough to be incapable of keeping a secret, asked about the
potential naming of 'the rabbit', it just didn't register with me. I didn't notice the holding-the-
breath silence or Maurice reacting to being kicked under the table. I had prepared a sleeping
draught in water the night before, but had miraculously fallen asleep before I could drink it.
Unfortunately, when I woke up thirsty the next morning, it was the first thing I saw and I
downed it and spent the rest of the day in something of a fuzz. They could have had the rabbit
on the dining table and I'm still not sure that I'd have noticed.
I was in a vulnerable state, something which Junior took full advantage of. I had been des-
patched to get the garden furniture from the loft above the stables, which meant shooing Juni-
or and Ultime out of their stable and setting up a ladder to get to the loft. For once I was able
to move Junior relatively easily and I locked him out, erected the ladder and climbed into the
loft. I went searching in the dim roof light for the hammock and the deckchairs and returned
to the top of the ladder to find Junior at the foot it. I clearly had not locked the stable door.
Junior looked up at me and, I swear, smiled as he sent the ladder crashing to the floor. I was
stranded in the loft - it was too high to jump down and anyway Junior was in the way if I
tried. So, for twenty-five minutes I was calling out for rescue, which eventually came with
lots of sympathy and concern. Not for me you understand, but for Junior in case he had been
startled by the crash of the ladder; the poor dear.
'He pushed it deliberately!' I whined when I got down. 'He bloody hates me that horse does!'
'Go and have a lie down,' they all said, guiding me back to the house. 'Have a rest.'
'He did, though. Deliberately!'
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