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That is a wonderful story but you are in trouble if you are losing an argument to a chicken.Just had an interesting conversation with Barking Bracket.
I stuck my head in the coop door to find Bracket eating an egg.
Without thinking I said, "you can't do that Bracket".
Bracket who may well be mad but is far from being an imbecile, looks up after wiping the worst of the tell tale yolk off her beak and says,
"you're self evidently incorrect".
Okay clever clogs I reply, "you shouldn't do that".
"Exactly why not?" Bracket asked.
I'm a bit stumped now. I'm left with the choice of owning up to being a selfish greedy egg snatching monster, or a rational friend with her best interests at heart.
Bracket is waiting, head cocked to one side with her beady long range eye fixed on the changes going on in my face. She knows she's got me.
Compromise was what I thought might ease the situation.
"Don't eat any more please", I asked her.
"I only ate that one because we broke it when Hinge came to lay an egg" Bracket informed me, "and I'm not going to eat any more because I won't have any to sit on, will I?" I can't argue with the logic of that and I was just about to say "you can't sit", when the earlier error flashed across my mind. I could just foresee the row when I mentioned I would confiscate the lot if I found her looking broody.
I tried another tack. "it's getting a bit late in the year for hatching"; I hoped it sounded as offhand as intended.
"It doesn't matter here" Bracket said. "If I was in say Finland, you might have a point but since I've been here it hasn't got much below freezing and chicks would be fine with me."
I couldn't help feeling that I wasn't getting anywhere near my desired outcome which was no more egg eating and no more going broody, this year at least.
I did think about bolstering my case with the cost of feed and housing, but I know the type of answer I would get to that and I don't have much of an argument in defense of the you can't live in the trees line of reason.
It started to rain. Bracket looking like a cross between Uriah Heep and Fagin metnions that I'll get terribly wet standing outside given I don't have feathers and I'm terribly delicate with regard to climatic change and suggests I go back to my coop before I'm soaked through.
I left feeling I might have done better if I had just kept my mouth shut.