As a child, my father told me that the crucial bridge between infancy and maturity in non-human mammals is breastfeeding. ‘They suckle their young until they become independent!’ he said, ‘whereas, in the western world, preparation for returning to work is the most common reason for human weaning!’

     ‘Did mummy feed me like that?’ I said pointing to the newly born piglets.

     ‘She did indeed!’ he replied and although I wanted to ask more questions, I didn’t! However, I remember thinking at the time that the whole subject of animals caring for their young was fascinating.

      The shortest nursing period of any mammal belongs to the hooded seal. Although they live for about thirty years, their childhood lasts just four days. You see, these seals must give birth out of water and the only surface available to them is floating ice. The warmth from the newly born pups melts the ice and they risk being separated from their mothers. And so the perils of life on a floating ice raft are avoided by a short childhood. Clever animals!

      The longest childhood goes to the Orangtans. These youngsters will ride on their mums and sleep in her hest for seven years or until a new baby arrives on the scene. The males will then wonder off but the females will hang around to learn the art of motherhood.

           My whole life has revolved around animals, wild and tame. I drove my grandmother crazy with the sick creatures I nursed in my bedroom as a child, and now fully grown, life at our home for waifs and strays is just the same.

Many years ago in a valley in the Lake District, my father was born. Thankfully, he was too young to realise the tragedy that would soon follow.

     His father (my grandfather) was a genius. Although, he was as eccentric as they come. Being an engineer and an inventor, he spent most of his time in his workshop, designing, making and testing his inventions. Often with great results but sadly, tragedy lay in waiting.

     One sunny Sunday morning, my grandfather asked my grandmother if she wanted to go on an adventure. She frowned at him because she knew what his adventures entailed and it was always a challenge. This time he wanted her to ride in the side car of his old motorbike. She hesitated, and rightly so, as she was seven months pregnant with her eighth child.

      ‘Just around the lakes,’ he begged, ‘I need to try out the ball hitch that connects the car to the bike. This was one of his inventions.

      So whilst the nannies took care of my father (who was two at the time) and the rest of the children, my grandmother squished herself into the side car and waved them all goodbye.

      ‘Go slowly now,’ she shouted up to my grandfather, ‘there’s no room in here to deliver a baby!’ And off they went.

      They enjoyed the leisurely (yet noisy) ride around Lake Windermere and on their return to their country home, with its own lake and a small island, disaster struck.

       The ball catch snapped and both the car and the bike went in opposite directions. My poor grandmother ended up in a duck pond and my grandfather, in the hedge.

        Doctors and nurses came to the house where they desperately tried to save my grandmother and her unborn child. Thankfully, my grandfather survived with just a few scratches. Distraught, he went to his workshop and waited for news. When it arrived, it wasn’t good.

        The nurse told him that the next 24 hours were crucial, but it was unlikely that the either of them would survive. He should prepare himself.

        The following morning, when the nurse went to see my grandfather, she opened his workshop door and horrifically discovered that, at the tender age of 31, my grandfather had committed suicide in his Rolls Royce. She had gone to inform him that his wife and child had both survived.

       We never met, of course, but I know that if we had, then we would have been the best of friends.

As I sit by my window and watch a watery moon shine faintly, I wonder what tale I shall tell you tonight. Shall I talk about the animals that live in our garden for waifs and strays, or the characters that live in Gusty Gully? Or perhaps I should just talk to you, as if you were here in the room with me!

      I shall light the fire and sit in the old armchair besides it. You can sit in the chair opposite me but be careful not to sit on the cat. If you’re in the mood for music we could sing-along with the old guitar that's leaning against the piano. Or perhaps you would like to listen to some classical music or read poetry from one of the books on the shelf behind you.

      On an evening like this, I like to read Hiawatha, written by Longfellow in 1855. The names of the characters just roll off your tongue, like Gitche Manito, the peace-bringing leader and Mudjekeewis, father of the Four Winds. Then there’s Nokomis, who falls from the moon and becomes Hiawatha’s Grandmother and the book would be nothing without Minnehaha, Hiawatha’s childhood sweetheart.

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

      Perhaps it’s because I can identify with this fictitious character, for I too went on a journey when I was much younger and did not return for many moons and many winters. I too stood on the shore and waved at my parting but no-one waved back, for no-one saw me go!

       So you are still there, sitting in the chair opposite me despite the embers fading fast. Take a blanket from behind you and place it on your knees and I shall bank up the fire and read the final verse.   

"I am weary of your quarrels,
Weary of your wars and bloodshed,
Weary of your prayers for vengeance,
Of your wranglings and dissensions;
All your strength is in your union,
All your danger is in discord;
Therefore be at peace henceforward,
And as brothers live together.

Goodnight my friend and remember, it is later than you think!

We never planned a big rescue. In fact we hadn’t planned a rescue at all. It just happened after dark one summers evening.

     ‘The kill is set for tomorrow,’ said my cousin anxiously, ‘300,000 hens are to be slaughtered. There’s no time to waste!’

     I looked around our home which wasn’t quite ready for the amount of waifs and strays she had in mind. But we did have a couple of outbuildings, enough to house a few hens. I wasn’t quite sure how many we would be brinnging home and it was probably just as well. But I would get enough food in ready for the poor and unsuspecting creatures. 

      ‘Count me in,’ I told my cousin,‘but it’s better we don’t mention it to my kind and unassuming husband. He would never agree to anything so wrong even if it is the right thing to do, in our eyes!’ So my kind and unassuming husband was totally unaware of the major rescue operation we were about to undertake.

       The following evening I met my cousin in a quiet lane near the battery farm. She had a friend with her with plenty of experience.

       ‘We can take the two cars!’ said my cousin, 'and if anyone asks, pretend we are there to help with the clear up. It’s all arranged.’

        My stomach began to churn and my sweaty hands slipped on the leather steering wheel. I felt like a criminal. I guess I was at that moment.

        As I followed the car in front, I wondered what my kind and unassuming husband would think of my behaviour. I have done many things in my life, like working illegally in places abroad, sometimes with fake work permits. I was very young and the need for survival was great. But that was a long time ago and just one of the thousand lives I once lived. I’m now an above board person helping others to survive, with the help of my kind and unassuming husband. And that’s what I was doing, helping others to survive!

        We pulled up in the shadows of a huge windowless building which had the makings of a jail.  It was a jail! There were a few people about but my cousin didn’t seem at all bothered. Her friend had everything in control. Then it happened! From that moment on, my life would never the same again. It happened so quickly. I will spare you some of the details but some you have to know.

          A man in overalls and a flat cap greeted us coldly. He was the jailer. My cousin’s friend seemed to know him which helped somewhat. He opened the large door to the jail at which point, I Froze.

         There were cell like cages, millions of them (that’s what I remember thinking at the time) all piled on top of each other and the smell.....Oh God, the smell! But this wasn’t the time to be sick. This was the time to get what we came for and run for it.

         The jailer opened up some cells and told us to hurry. He threw boxes on the floor and left us. The light was dim but enough to see the debilitating state of these innocent hens. Hens that had never known what it was like to see daylight, nor stretched their wings or had a dust bath in the sun. They had never teased a worm from the earth or a snail from its shell.

          ‘Hurry up!’ my cousin hissed or they’ll all be dead in an hour and so will we if we’re caught!’

          I didn’t think for one moment that I would be killed for saving the lives of ill treated hens, but who knows!

          I placed my hands around the first hen, touching the stubs where feathers should have been. Into the box it went, then another and another. Slow to start then picked up speed. The noise was eerie, almost as if they knew that death was coming.

          ‘I’ve got you,’ I whispered to each one reassuringly. ‘You’re safe now.’

          I could feel their muscle wastage, due to lack of exercise. Remember, that these poor creatures had a space the size of an A4 piece of paper, or less. Some of their feet were so lacerated that we had to ease them off the wire floors they stood on.

           For many, it was too late! They lay dead, beneath their surviving house mates. A release from the pain and suffering there was no need for.   

            When the boxes were full we placed as many hens as we could into our cars, with little thought of how we would drive them away. And when it was over, it seemed such a small amount to the thousands we had to leave behind. Each inward breath fuelled my anger.

            The jailer came back. He asked us to leave but I couldn’t. I ran back and tore open a cage. I will always remember that moment. I wrapped my shaky hands around an unwilling hen. She didn’t want to leave. ‘Come on girl,’ I tried to coax her but she cried and clung on to the wire with her claws. Then I saw the egg rolling away and I grabbed it.

             ‘So this is what you want?’ I said through my tears. ‘That’s not a problem. ‘One day you shall have a wee one of your own, I promise!’ And I tucked her inside my jacket with the egg (which surprisingly, never broke).    

             ‘Why, there’s more meat on a sandwich than on you,’ I whispered. And that is what I called her, Sandwich! Her story is on my ‘small tales’ page.

              Just as I was about to be dragged away by my cousin, I saw her. She had lain beneath Sandwich, bloody and close to death.

              ‘Leave her!’ said my cousin firmly, ‘she’s almost dead.’

               But I couldn’t. I picked her up gently and held her close to me. That is how I drove home, with Featherpin on my lap, bleeding and almost unconscious and Sandwich, still tucked inside my jacket.

               I can’t remember a time when I cried so much. The pain of leaving so many hens that had never known kindness was overwhelming.

               I needn’t tell you how my kind and unassuming husband greeted me, because you should know that already. Shortly afterwards, a hundred bewildered but very lucky hens were sleeping on a bed of straw for the very first time and when they awoke in the morning, it was to the sound of birds and a sun shining through the cracks in the wood. They were safe in the home for waifs and strays!

P.S

 I would just like to add this quote, from a study done at Bristol University on hens and other farm animals.

“Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined... they are individuals in their own right." On chickens specifically, Discovery Magazine explains research from the University of Bristol: "Chickens do not just live in the present but can anticipate the future and demonstrate self-control... something previously attributed only to humans and other primates..."

When I dug up the last of our crop of potatoes from our home for waifs and strays, I remembered with sadness the story my grandmother once told me when I was very young. It was about a wind that carried a terrible fungus that killed a million men, women and children in Ireland.

     ‘It began a long time ago,’ she said, ‘when Queen Victoria was on the throne and Charles Dickens published his book, The tale of two cities.

     ‘All of England, Wales and Scotland suffered too,’ she said, 'but nothing like the poor Irish. They were among the poorest people of the western world.’ She went on to tell me that in Ireland, the average age a man could expect to live was 40 and that the potato was their staple crop. So when the wind came, carrying with it the fungus, they suffered badly.

      ‘It killed the potato crops,’ I remember her telling me, ‘so people starved. It was a cruel, horrible time.’ I sat staring at my grandmother’s face. It was almost as if she herself had been a part of it.

      ‘And then there were the coffin ships,’ she was washing the dishes in the sink when she told me about the coffin ships, ‘that was the worst of all!’ She was shaking her head as she spoke. I remember thinking that I had never seen my grandmother like this but I remained quiet, and watched the embers burning in the fire.

     ‘They put the poor families in crowded and poorly built ships, bound for Canada with the promise of a better life of course. But very few made it,’ she was talking almost to herself. ‘Most of them ended up overboard after they’d succumbed to typhus or some other inescapable disease.’ All the time I just listened. It would be many years later before I understood what happened at that time.

       ‘Couldn’t someone help them?’ was the only question I asked.      

         'Laissez-faire, let it be,’ she replied, ‘that was the thinking of the government at the time.’ And she said no more.

        It was a couple of years later when I asked my grandmother about the story and why had it affected her so badly. She replied ‘our family were among those that suffered!’

        So as I dug and picked my potatoes, I was care careful not to miss a single one.