I read another blog post today that reminded me of this one time last summer while hanging out washing.
Set the scene in your mind: It is early on a weekday morning (and I do mean early, circa 5.45am-ish before I had even taken a sip of that blissful first morning coffee). I was outside hanging out washing as the sun was coming up on a fine and still day. Out of the early dusk silence I hear the squawk of some sort of bird echo around the backyard. I look around trying to see where it is coming from but I can’t see any birds, so I carry on the task at hand.
SQUAWK!
What was that? Something I had never heard before. A wood pigeon?
SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK!
There it was again, what kind of exotic unusual bird was that?!
I remember a time that my Nana told me about. She was doing the dishes in the sink at the kitchen window overlooking her garden when she suddenly glanced out to see a giant peacock in her front yard! You’d think you were hallucinating wouldn’t you? But nope, sure enough she had a peacock pecking away in her garden that had escaped the local zoo.
SQUAWK SQUUUAWK!
With an anticipation of excitement, I went rushing inside to get the great outdoorsman (that would be my husband, not my three year old).
‘Quickly! There’s an exotic bird outside but I can’t see what it is! You have to come listen and tell me what it is! Quickly, before it flies away!’
So here I drag my poor husband outside at the crack of dawn to listen to this bird (at this point I am so sure it must be some unusual rarely seen breed of native bird or an escaped zoo creature).
We stand in silence in the middle of the backyard.
Silence.
It’s gone. My husband thinks I am imagining it.
SQUAWK.
Excitement!
‘There! Did you hear that?!’
SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK!
My husband looks at me. ‘That?’
‘Yes! What is it?’
SQUAWK SQUUUAWK!
He looks at me and laughs.
‘It’s a chicken!’
Chickens?! Are you shitting me? My exciting exotic never seen before sounding native bird is the chickens across the road? Not a wood pigeon, an escaped cockatoo or some giant peacock?
And more importantly – How the hell do I not know what a chicken sounds like?!
What can I tell ya?
Do not attempt housework BEFORE you have had that first morning coffee!
SQUAWK!
ahahaaha!! Are you serious??!! You don’t know what a chicken sounds like? Well if I heard a squawk, I wouldn’t think chicken. I would think cockatoo. And it probably would be the same one that always flies over our house……that I want to punch ;).
Maybe your hubby was wrong. Maybe he was just saying ‘chicken’ so he could go back inside and get back to whatever he was doing. I would go with that.
p.s. roosters are guys, chickens are, well, chicks 🙂 xo
Kelly recently posted…SHUTUP EVERYONE! MY KID IS ASLEEP!
I wouldn’t say I don’t know what a chicken sounds like so much as I didn’t identify that squawk as that of a chicken! In my defence, it was super early in the morning and I wasn’t really expecting to hear chickens squawking in the suburbs! Haha. And yes, I know roosters are the males but give me a picture of 10 chickens/roosters and ask me to tell them apart and I wouldn’t be able to! City chic through and through over here 🙂
Haidee recently posted…Yet Another Funny Tale Told At My Own Expense
Okay, okay. I wasn’t having a go at you, well maybe I was 😉 xo
Kelly recently posted…SHUTUP EVERYONE! MY KID IS ASLEEP!
Child slave labour 😉
Touche. Until we meet again.
Kelly recently posted…SHUTUP EVERYONE! MY KID IS ASLEEP!
Thanks for the laugh. I think you’re right, coffee before housework!
Claire @ Life on Wallace recently posted…Why a catnapping baby is hard work
Definitely, I don’t know what I was thinking!
Haidee recently posted…Yet Another Funny Tale Told At My Own Expense