Day 4.

Big beautiful Bertha. Photography by F L Campbell

Bush eggs: one. Nest box eggs: none. Feed hopper: full. Excellent poems written: one.

Checked on Steve. She says she has a pain in her knees from sitting too long. Ha! Day four of 21! She ain’t seen nothing yet!

I was thinking a lot about Bertha last night after my fun time with Brian. Bertha was such a trick, always up to something with that gleam in her eye. She was a BIG girl, that Bertha, about four times my size and I’m not tiny. Loved her food, oh yes. Would gallop up to the treat bowl when called by the people, fat, feathery thighs flying. That’s what killed her in the end – not the thighs, of course, but the running for food. Did her heart in and all for a little scrap of jelly. Still, at least she died with her eye firmly on the prize.

I wrote a poem in honour of her; I’m sure she would have liked it. I do miss her so.

A Poem about Bertha by Ruby
Bertha was a big girl
There’s no mistaking that.
Some would even go so far
As to call her fat.
But I myself prefer to think
She was just a bottomless vat.

Treats would go in one end
Eggs come out the other.
Given half a chance, I think
She would have been a great mother.

Yes, she was a big hen
But only some of that was tummy.
It was her heart that made her very large
And also extremely chummy.


I love poetry. It was my favourite subject at Unipeck. And I think, without sounding too immodest, that I’m really rather good at it.