My Bantams

In my last blog story, if you remember, I mentioned my Bantam chickens. I suppose I should better tell you where I got them, when I got them, who I got them from and the disaster that happened a few weeks ago.  I was spending my birthday at the coast where my great Uncle Fuzz lives. He was the one who gave me three bantam chickens for my birthday. I didn’t think much of them at first but now I have actually seen them up close and they are here in Tabora they are such a pleasure to have around and I am extremely grateful to Uncle Fuzz. Well actually we only have two now, here’s why.The three chickens we got are a cockerel and two ladies. And when Amelia first saw them – in a box in the car -  she said promptly,“I won’t ask,”Although she enthusiastically helped name them. This is what we got, Egghead, (the cockerel) Flip Flop (the brown one) and Fruitcake. (The black one) I have recently named the two remaining also Mr. and Mrs. No eggs, seeing as we still have to eat light yellow eggs and they have no children. So back to the story.Because we had to stop in Arusha before going back to Tabora the chickens stayed in a fairly big cage. This was fine but on the last day when we had to put them back in their cardboard box for traveling Fruitcake ran away.You may think that it’s easy to catch a bantam chicken, but its not! First of all they’re fast and second of all – they can technically fly. So we left for Tabora without her. Egghead crowing whenever possible. I don’t think any African that passed us had ever seen a Mzungu family with chickens in their car.Two days later we got a call from our friend saying that he’d successfully caught Fruitcake (although with a lot of bother) and now he was keeping her at my friend’s house. So I’ll be able to write about her adventures once she joins Mr and Mrs No Eggs here … we hope to collect her next month.