Storm Gloria descended on us yesterday following a spell of dry warm sunny weather to lull us into a false sense of Spring being on the way. Temperatures had dropped from low twenties to single figures. We have had a lot of frost at night but warming quickly by day.

Yesterday the black clouds gathered, it had rained overnight and more looked imminent. Red warnings for extreme snowfall popped up everywhere and the winds were getting stronger by the hour.

I decided to gather up the chickens and ducks and get them into Chook palace, after one chicken took a swim in the duck pond last week which resulted in a three quarter hour blow dry session and a course of hypnotherapy for trauma. I wasn’t sure I could cope with all of them needing a pamper session. I announced my plan to move them in. Bad move.....they were not amused, in fact downright stubborn. Sensing a battle, I formed a plan. I found pieces of wood to block the doorways and moved all their bowls inside. I happened to be in the right place at the right time and scooped up Donna who promptly threw a right royal wobbler. You would have thought she was being attacked instead of rescued. Ungrateful madam. I started to move her through the door so she opened her wings which made her too wide to go through the doorway. Thoughts of a friends cat trying to get a baby seagull through a cat flap spring to mind, the cat couldn’t get the bird inside so reversed in  and the bird got away. That was not going to happen here, she went in sideways. I bundled her inside and shut the door. I had already stopped up the entrance to the chicken roost as having herded the chickens in one door they promptly left by the other. Good game, I thought. I stopped up all but one of the entrances but do you think they would go in that way? They stood around outside the blocked door wondering why they couldn’t get in. Clearly the hole next to it didn’t count as a door. I attempted to catch Bitsy but she was suddenly a champion sprinter and the whole scene was starting to resemble a Benny Hill sketch. eventually I caught her and she too was posted in through the door where she was reunited with a still screaming Donna.

That left three chickens. The one that had a bath last week allowed herself to be picked up and popped inside, lovely bird.....that left two more. It was starting to rain heavier so my patience was wearing thin. I made a grab for one of them, missed and stood in the remaining water bowl which flipped neatly over posting some of the water over the top of my boot.......the cold water made its way down to my dry foot which was rapidly getting cold and soggy as was my mood. The chickens thought tea was arriving so gathered round the water bowl hopefully.....I grabbed the nearest one and posted it inside. One left...... I looked her in the eye, the rain was coming down faster and there was still the geese to see to. She peered at me from the back of her shelter and dared me to try and reach her. I knelt down and glared back, drips were falling down the back of my neck. She made a dash for it but I was too fast. My time in the school netball team has never been forgotten!  I caught her and passed her neatly through the hole and slammed the door shut. Triumphant, I raced round and put their bowl of spaghetti in with them as a hasty apology then went round to feed the geese.

They ran for the pond as always and I was able to put their food down but the Nissan hut they sleep in was open to the wind and getting soggier by the minute. They do have a dry enclosure facing the other way but they choose to ignore it. I left them eating tea and rounded up a pallet, fence panels breeze blocks and wire. As always I had a plan B........where would I be without a plan B.

The geese helpfully retreated back to the pond and I was able to construct a vestibule on the front of the Nissan hut big enough to give them and their food, water and shelter. The bowl of lettuce was filling fast with water and they really don’t like wet lettuce. The fact that each piece of lettuce they pick up is carefully dunked in the water bowl then eaten, clearly is not the same. A bit like serving soup and chucking the bread into it when you weren’t ready for it I suppose.

I construct the shelter and wire it together making sure it won’t collapse and retreat leaving them to use it or not, their choice, I am beyond doing more.

I leave a light on for the chickens and ducks who are still muttering, I will replace it with a night light later.

Once inside I change all my clothes and wonder how to get my coat dry by morning.

It is a wild night with gale force winds and rain or snow or both. Sleeping is not easy and I get up early. First a check of the house to see if there had been any damage, then an assault on the wardrobes to find a dry mac. I find a fluorescent orange one, now I will resemble a motorway workman. At least I will be dry. 

I prepare the lettuce and having seen the piles of ice and water outside dress accordingly. Day-Glo orange waterproof to top it off. I take the prepared lettuce and venture out to check the ungrateful brood. They are fine, not ecstatic about the apparition in Day-Glo orange invading their cramped quarters and still muttering, them not me, although to be fair I am muttering, but I’m still not letting them out till later however much they protest. Their enclosure is inches deep in water and the pond overflowing.

The geese don’t seem bothered. Their enclosure is 4 inches deep in water and it might as well be a giant pond. The vestibule stayed up, I never doubted it. I spent half an hour baling them out so they had a bit of ground to stand on.

By now my mac is as soggy as the other one. It’s waterproof as in all the water hits it and runs off onto my now saturated trousers and the seeps inside my boots, I’ve been here before......the other realisation is that if you wear a hood, it either blows off straight away or you use the toggles to fasten it and the front instantly covers your eyes preventing you seeing anything you are trying to do. I settle for not fastening it and getting a soggy balaclava and drips down the back of my neck.  Birds fed and watered, well dirty water replaced with clean water, I am now feeling as if I have taken a cold shower with all my clothes on.

The next job is to rescue the gazebo outside Chook Palace which is collapsing under the weight of water and ice, most of which ends up down my neck or in my boots as I thought it might.

I finish repairs and squelch back to the house to change before I catch pneumonia. Now I must go back to the wardrobes to see if there is anything else remotely waterproof I can wear later on outside.