Bob on the case, Bert the enforcer behind

Bob the Chook has become my master.  Her dominion over life at home is plain.

It starts with the sun.

If I’m not up with it she starts squarking to remind me that, in breach of United Nation and the World Food Authority’s standards, she is being poorly fed.

For a while I would get up straight away, horrified at her operatic sounds, thinking the neighbours may believe she was being abused or dying of hunger.

In all of this her grain bottle was well-stocked.

I decided she was being a drama queen and needed to be ignored, that ignoring her would stop the daybreak squarking.

Mistake.

Joan Sutherland, Ms Kenny, Pavrotti have met their match and it’s in my backyard at 6 am, loudly.  Awfully.

So now I get up early.  All the time.

Things are edgy here.

I like to start the day with a shower.

Hawk-eared Bob seems to regard the sounds of me showering as evidence of self-indulgent delay.  And my calls mid shower to shut up take away the zen moments I treasure under the hot water.

Now I feed Bob – whose grain bottle remains well-stocked at all times, yes sir – before I shower.

Usually, now, my first offerings are a treat provided by the Chook Whisperer from Dulwich Hill, Bob’s human ally and sympathizer at all times in this drawn out power struggle.

The Chook Whisperer brings bags of corn for me to feed Bob.  Or else.

And Bob knows it.

This morning when I proferred corn gifts to Bob Now God through the kitchen window she did a couple of fly bys.  The sight of Bob’s hurried flapping arcs made me wonder.

What else in my daily life am I no longer master of?

If not my shower, my breakfast, my time of rising . . . what?

Squark.