I nearly cooked a chicken

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I've written about the pets we had when I was a child. When we were married and living in a small, isolated country town we acquired a baby bantam chicken. Its mother left it behind in some wet grass and by the time we found it, it was very cold and almost on its last legs. I dropped it into a soft sock and sat it on a hot water-bottle. When I checked it about ten minutes later it was well and truly alive but had its little beak open panting. I'd nearly cooked it! The Beak as we called it thrived and liked to spend her evenings sitting in the crook of an ankle watching TV with the family. Sometimes she would work her way up to a shoulder or would be quite happy to sit on top of someone's head and settle down. The Beak also loved elastic bands and perhaps thought they were worms. We had several bands strung together. She would grab one end in her beak and you could swing her off the ground and round in circles but she wouldn't let go. Eventually she went to live with my mother and raised many a batch of chickens of her own. We don't have a photo of The Beak but here is Bunty being a circus sheep and standing on a rock.