Deluded Custodians never sit on the fence.

My Hill #4

By a feral rooster named Menelaus.

https://annjames-20427.medium.com/my-hill-3-21e2384adcd2

Following on from Ann James and Hill #3.

A feral chicken named Helen.

My great undoing. The chick that launched a 1000 cock-a-doodle-dos.

And my wife. Untamed, uncooped. She had fled to Troy, resulting in the great Cockerel War to reclaim her hand.

Yet the events as described in Homer Simpson’s The Oddity and The Idiot are far from accurate.

As we stood aboard the ship, awaiting our return to Sparta, she flew to coop and thus began my quest to regain her trust and companionship.

I travelled the world and the seven seas. I even consulted the great oracle, Annie of Lennox. Her cryptic words enlightened my not.

“Everybody’s looking for something”

I had become blinded by my quest.

Then one day, I opened my eyes and realised I was now trapped in the Downunderworld.

What hellish place is this?

The Downunderworld was inhabited by strange and menacing creatures, stuck in an eternal loop of endless torment.

Most fearsome of all, the Demon Dog, Rex the Trojan Corgi.

Each morning he would come bounding from the palace. The tormentation would begin with a lot of barking, which would usually abate once one of the palace warlocks threw him a bone.

He’d usually lose interest at this point and issue from his belly an army of Amazonian warrior guinea pigs to continue the torment.

Fortunately for me, the architect of this hellscape didn’t have a good sense of scale and being ten times taller than these ladies, I was nowhere near as frightened as I was meant to be.

Then there was the evil Tilli Manilli, who spent all day humming Girl You Knows It’s True and Blame It On The Rain. Pure torture.

The only respite came at night when they all retired to the palace.

I’m not the only avian prisoner in the Downunderworld and once the sun had set, I heard the blackbirds whispering. Mostly hoping that Tilli Manilli would learn some Paul McCartney songs, but every now and then, the whispers would turn to the great Lambo, the only prisoner ever to have escaped the Downunderworld.

I too began plotting my escape.

Until then, the only thing that kept me safe was that I had carved out a small territory of my own, on the hill of wood chips at the farthest corner of the Downunderworld.

My Hill.