Chicken Skirmish by Debra Plucknett
Margaret Trimley was the Queen of plastic flamingoes, the silk stocking of ghastly garden tat.
Melanie Grimshaw, Margaret’s archenemy, performed her daily tasks, running her chickens through their communal snicket, an annoyance Margaret had come to bear. And down to the field across the way, where all biological fowl huddled.
Margaret adorned their common ground with hideous collectables and pots of sea holly, valerian, and stinky boxwood. All very off-putting for the chickens. Melanie would repeat to all those who listened.
“They always catch their little legs on your tat, Margaret”. Melanie said on Monday.
Tittynopes of tittle and tattle befell daily.
That was Margaret Trimley and Melanie Grimshaw, at each other day in, day out.
Tuesday came and went, and Wednesday developed.
Low-lying cumuliform circumnavigated the skies above Scattisham.
Was it the raspberry rumba at breakfast that created such a skirmish?
Or Margaret’s stinky shrubs and plastic flamingoes?
Whatever it was, the whole of Acacia Drive spent the day picking remnants of flamingo-pink plastic out of their box hedges.
Darcy and Fleming, Melanie’s chickens, were devoured, of course.
Fred Clarke, the butcher, hadn’t waited around. The Grimshaw family fowl went straight in the back of his old Ford, destined for kitchen tables across the shire.
In her spare time, Debra contemplates life from a simpler time. Before mobile phones, TVs, and computers. A time when ladies wore crimplene frocks and curlers.
Image purchased by author from Etsy
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What a fun piece. I particularly liked your unusual words, had to look up a couple, and this sentence ‘ Tittynopes of tittle and tattle befell daily.’