Curry & Rice are 2 fullygrown commercial Hyline hens. They have come o live with us in the Whinery’s beach house coop.  I have dubbed them ‘the double rescue‘ hens.

You see, they were rescued from a caged egg farm 2 years ago. Along with 20 others, they were saved from a life of cruelty by a small rescue team in Brisbane. They proceeded to have an egg-citing life in a domestic yard in a breakfast Creek suburban home, where they free ranged in a large run on an empty block adjacent to their adopted home, on the banks of the Breakfast Creek.

Then, in January, the floods came.

Curry & Rice are all that remain of the 20 hens.

The others, swept away by flood waters on January 11 like so many other animals and livestock, never knew what was coming. They survived, it seems, by perching high in trees for a week. I can only imagine what was going through their chooky heads.  Since then, the poor girls have lived thigh deep in mud, ranging the flood ravaged block, foraging for what they could.

Now they live with us.

They were wormy, covered in caked poo and mud, and Curry so stressed she still has not closed her beak (open beaks are a sign of chooky stress).

Being the good adoptive parents we are, we have cleaned them up, crop wormed them (the only non-organic thing I do with the chooks) and set them in with our fussy, obstreperous Araucanas.  Stew repaid the offer of companionship by spending the entire Saturday standing outside the garden shed (a good 10 meters away from the coop) quivering in indignation and bok-bok-BOK-ing at the intruders (which are twice her size).

The intruders, huge as they are, shivered behind the palm trees, only poking their heads out to see if  it was yet safe.  Curry, who is a good 3 cms wider and taller than Rice, spent the day hidden behind her companion nudging her forward as if to say ‘YOU go first’.

They spent their first night together asleep on the grass by the doorway near the roost, since the bossy Stew & Dumpling (who are the size of small bantams) stretched their wings out and hogged the roost, not allowing the newbies any perch space at all.

Bullies.

We were glad to be able to rescue our rescue hens. There were so many other animals that were not so lucky, being displaced after the floods. Some have never been claimed. Dogs, cats, horses, cattle, hens and more. Whilst the media concentrates on people and homes, (and I am not condemning that at all), there are many displaced animals out there looking for a home.

Can you help?

I’d had trouble finding it.

I’d asked around, even ordered it (twice!) at bookshops, but to no avail.

I’d read this book previously, through my local library. It had some great pointers and tips I knew I’d want to use again.  A copy for my own library was a must-have.

So when the gorgeous Alyson Hill sent me a copy of her book “Chooks in the City” I was thrilled.

The way Alyson talks about ‘her girls’ cracks me right up.  For example, on hen’s legs “...The girls I am raising now have long, silky smooth legs that any bird would be proud of. In fact, they’re nicer than mine“. Or “A broody hen is like a cross between a recalcitrant teenager and a woman with very serious PMT“.

As Al says ” …the lives of modern people were becoming like those of battery hens. We live in our boxes, shoulder to shoulder, inoculated and vaccinated against anything that may cut down on our working time as slaves to the almighty dollar”. Watching chooky antics, knowing that the girls and their role in our veggie-garden/egg/scrap-bucket/egg  cycle is helping us live less like battery hens (and you all know my feelings on battery hens) and take the time to smell the compost. It’s a good smell. It’s a good feeling.

If you love chookiness, gardening and anything green – or just love a good read, go visit Al. You will not be disappointed.

So, the Skipper rings me this afternoon. He sounds a bit low.

Turns out, today he was able to get into one of the sub-levels of one of the buildings along riverside, where he had our company install air conditioning and filtration units for the multi story building just a few short months ago.

Today they could get into sub level three. There are still two sub levels below this. Workers were able to cut through a fire door to enter and after a day of pumping out the mud, they allowed contractors in to survey damage and  officially condemn equipment.

He said the damage, the mud, the smell – inexplicable.

Remember this is the underbelly of a modern, multi-level building on the banks of the Brisbane river – one that operates some of the State’s most expensive offices, legal practices and more.

The sub level he had to tour had not been seen by anyone until he and the team arrived. He described to me how the car park entrance on the side furthest from the river still housed cars, relinquished when people had to evacuate. Perhaps they thought their vehicles safe, locked up underground?  They had all been pushed up against the flood doors, and most remain filled with mud. He described iPads, laptops, phones and other equipment  bundled together by the staircase base, where the river water gathered them up as it burst windows or sunroofs and plucked objects from Audis, BMWs and Porsches.

Those that choose the healthy route to work that day utilised the allocated bike rack. There, chained to the bike rack, remain a tangle of spokes and chains and wheels dripping with slime and detritus.

To  enter the power rooms and air conditioning unit rooms, he had to pass through the archive chambers.  Archive chambers of Law offices, with walls lined with rows  and rows and rows of shelves, timber trays labelled  ‘DO NOT DESTROY’, ‘DO NOT REMOVE’, ‘DO NOT SHRED’. The message, meant for dryer times, means nothing now as the contents have begun to grow mould, long green spores and strands of flossy fungus that would make Gregory House proud.

Traverse to these chambers have to be done by descending or ascending fire escape stairs. Sub level lifts are still not working as the chambers and shafts are still filled with mud and sludge. The fluid seems to ooze from the walls, it seems impossible to remove, it seems to reproduce on it’s own. He described it as  a moulding fester that resembles lumpy melted rancid chocolate.  He reports the droning sound of pumps and high pressure cleaners combined with the smell is overwhelming.

There is no power, still, in the sub levels of these buildings. Generators run to allow white collar workers upstairs resume their duties, other gennies run below to provide dim lights.  Contractors accompanying the Skipper wear headlights over their safety harnesses in order to see where they are going, what they are doing.

It took him, he says, 3 hours to tour sub floor 3 today. He drove back home for a shower before he goes back in tonight to try and compete one more floor. It’s day one,  and he’s toured one level of one facility. We estimate we have 40 or so more to tour and condemn.