Don't pet them, grab them! [Mingle]

[ourearth]

Date: 25th of July
Characters: Open!

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I.

In the afternoon on the 25th, a network message alerts the Numbered to the fact that the petting zoo in Moss Manor's Menagerie is facing a major break-out: Someone has torn down the fences, and all the bunnies, sheep, and all the other animals typically found in petting zoos have decided to book it. They are now swarming the manor's grounds.

Due to the staff being nowhere near enough to catch them all, and due to the generally low threat level of the animals that escaped, visitors are asked to help catch them instead of being sent away.

And anyone who just happens to show up and help will be happily welcomed and included in the fort, without any question of who told them that help is needed.


II.

Afterwards, Lady Margaret Camilla Brassant invites everyone onto her patio and offers refreshments - tea, water, little sandwiches, cake and scones with clotted cream and jam. She retires quickly herself, but not before giving a brief speech thanking everyone who helped save the gardens from hungry mouths.

Comments

[blueskying]

Sky hasn't heard the network message. He's here on unrelated matters, ie bracing a little notepad against the prosthetic part of his forearm, and noticed the hue and cry going up.

Maybe as a young man he'd have got in the way of a running sheep and all that momentum that comes with it, and gone crawling after rabbits, but he's not a young man and anyway his hooks would probably hurt a struggling animal. Chickens, now. Even fur-feathered white silkies, more like plush toys than the birds he knew, are still chickens. Long ago in a state far away he'd been a farmboy.

So he may be seen in a quieter area casting cracked corn and talking in a peculiar high mutter, "Here you go, girl, here you go," as extremely fluffy birds emerge from hedges and undergrowth to scratch at the lawn in pursuit of their food. Exactly how he's going to get any of them back in a pen is something he's going to have to figure out later. They're docile, he should be able to heft some of them up.

[runs]

Kitty, a struggling giant bunny pressed against her chest, comes across the scene and stops to peer at it curiously. She's not particularly surprised to see someone she knows here - for a kid her age, she knows a surprising amount of older people, and besides why would he not be here, sitting peacefully in the middle or commotion and mayhem with a flock of happy birds? That sounds about right for him. She wonders if the seeds are better than the cookies he has.

"How do you know that that one is a girl?"

[blueskying]

Sky's sat down on a bench and tried holding out his hand with corn. One of the silkies, completely tame and fearless of people, has hopped up besides him to peck at the offering.

"Hey, Kitty. Be careful with that guy, make sure you support it. I think rabbits can hurt themselves struggling." Something about the spine? It was years ago that he heard about it. He looks back at the chicken. "Well, I can't be totally sure, but roosters are usually bigger than hens and have different combs and feathering. Plus people always want more hens than roosters. Roosters are more feisty."

As he says that the silkie hen finishes pecking up or flinging aside the corn in his hand and pecks several times at his bare palm. Sky laughs. "Whoah! Well, it's relative. Calm down, girl, I only have one of these."

[runs]

"...How do I support it?" Nobody has told her anything about what she should actually do once she got one of the rabbits, she was just told to focus on "bunnies and everything smaller than that, leave the larger animals to the bigger kids and adults".

"Huh." She tilts her head and squints at the birds around. "Well, there are more that look like her than not. What are you going to do with them once they're full?"

[blueskying]

"Try, uh..." Some of his family has had rabbits and he remembers some warning stories when visiting, but he hasn't had a lot to do with them himself. "Holding it against you is good but I think you gotta make sure to hang on to its backside and keep its feet pointed away, so it can't scratch too badly. They're not as sturdy as cats and dogs but they've still got claws." That part, he does remember.

Cheerfully, the bold hen inspecting his fingers, he admits, "I haven't thought that far ahead! They might stick around, but the commotion has them nervous. They'd probably like to be back in their pen. When my aunt and uncle kept chickens and let them roam you just had to ring the dinner bell to get most of them back in the yard in the evening, and then I'd go around pulling a few out of trees or off the ground and tossing them in."

Of course those had been eggs-and-meat birds, and enough of them that if one disappeared here and there, well, it was the country, these things happened. Sometimes a proud hen would reappear with chicks, having managed to lay and incubate somewhere secret. More often they were never seen again.

[runs]

"... don't have to try and hold its butt and support the head?" She's been told how to hold a baby, that's pretty much what she's going off here. Just a baby with long ears. That can scratch you up, apparently, which doesn't sound so great.

"I could try to find someone who has a ...basket or whatever you put them in to carry them back," she then offers after a moment of thought. That's how you do these things, right?

[blueskying]

"Ah... do have to, I think, and be careful putting it down." He smiles, shrugs. "I've only held a live rabbit once and that was before you were born, actually. I'm sure it'll be fine as long as you take care."

And if it's not fine, that'll be a little rough but not unsurmountable for Kitty. Sky isn't here to give orders.

"Hey, there's a thought. I couldn't carry off more than one or two at a time. Would you mind, once you've got your friend settled?" Even the braver birds are neophobic and wary of his hooks, so while these are small, as chickens go, he can't just pile them into the crook of his arm.

[runs]

"I'm going to do my best!

And I can do both at the same time maybe." She grins at him and then turns to go and do the thing. "I'll be back!"

And with that, she is off.

And returns a while later without the bunny but with what looks like two cat carriers. "They only had these left."

[blueskying]

With a smile he digs out more bribes for the fowl. They are, he expects, somewhat used to wandering around the grounds. He's been to zoos where poultry and peafowl wandered freely through public areas, and the birds he's seen don't have the pecked bloody look of chickens kept in tight quarters. But, of course, white birds are more visible to predators, and these obviously aren't a flighted breed...

Well, you can only do your best.

When Kitty returns he raises his head. He's sat on a bench and one of the fluffy hens has lowered herself onto his foot, resting. "Oh, hey. Yes, I think we could fit a few into each of those."

[runs]

She flashes him a brief grin, relieved that he thinks that this will work, and puts one of the carries down.

"Maybe they'll go in there themselves if you move the food dispensing into them?"

[blueskying]

"Hmm. I could toss some and there'd be a rush into the carrier if they believed that's where the food went, and weren't afraid of getting trapped. Animals don't always figure that out as quickly as we do," he adds. "Or at all sometimes. I had a cat once who could never understand that if you threw his favorite toy into a box it was inside the box, no matter how often we showed him."

Good old Boots. "Do you want to try? You'd have to feed them a little bit first, so they knew you had something."

Since Sky is not presently distributing treats the chickens are doing more scratching, preening, and lounging, but they're still on the lookout for more free food.

[runs]

"I can." She looks a bit unsure. "Do you have some that I can use?"

She's been told off for feeding birds before - don't feed the seagulls, don't feed the swans, don't feed the ducks - so she isn't sure if this is really allowed, but if the one adult in attendance says that it is okay it should be safe and at least not super unhealthy for those birds...

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Are those supposed to be chickens or baby emus?" asks a familiar voice. Sam Stone got the network message, himself, and is here to investigate. He'd drifted immediately to the familiar thatch of hair and sharp-ended arm.

[blueskying]

Sky nods recognition at Sam and gazes pensively at the preposterous birds scratching and making the chicken murmur noise.

"You know, I've never seen a baby emu. These walk like chickens and talk like chickens, but I could be mistaken. They've got five toes on each foot, and that's not how chickens work. Quick, find a millennial with a smart phone!" He does not have a smartphone, much to the exasperation of his kids.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I don't think I care that much," Sam comments dryly. "So are we catching them, or luring them with more birdseed? Or are you just communing with nature and it's up to me to do the wrangling?" He can tease. They know each other, so he's allowed, right?

[blueskying]

"I'm not certain these are natural, but of course, my job is to love all life and not make such judgments," he jokes. "They're scared of my souvenir, so I don't think I can pick up more than one at a time. If they let me pick them up at all. I wasn't aware this was a formal occasion!" As a kid he'd caught them two-handed, and his hooks are better at a lot of things than the five-fingered hand he uses in fancier situations. Just not for grabbing birds.

Still, he gets his hand underneath the fluffy body of a bird that's just finished pecking up a sprinkling of corn. The silkie, a representative of a very docile breed, squirms a little as it's lifted and bukbuk buk buks more loudly, but doesn't protest very much.

[scarsolderthanyou]

If Sky can do it, so can Sam. He goes for one under each arm, since his own souvenir from the airforce is a bad eye and a handful of scars, not a missing hand. "There we go. Let's get these back to their pen. They're probably some of the least troublesome of the ones that got out. There's a donkey around here somewhere."

[blueskying]

There is some kicking from the chickens Sam selects, and some of the others covertly move under a topiary, but they are used to being handled. Sky picks his way through the rest of the flock, hoping that someone's got an area enclosed by now.

"Yeah, I thought I heard braying. I hope it's a miniature donkey." He considers. "Though that'd still be pretty strong, I expect."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"We'll just have to not make it angry," Sam says. "Donkeys like carrots, right?" Horses like carrots, so it stands to reason that a donkey would, too. Similar teeth and digestive systems.

[blueskying]

"I assume they do. They may also like biting, though. It might be best to leave that to the professionals." Sky's hoping that staff with that kind of skillset are present and not occupied by some even more rambunctious child-safe animal. Well, nothing for it now.

"I grew up on a farm - you ever have much to do with animals?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Hunting them," Sam shrugs a little, making the chickens under his arms squirm. They're almost to the pen, though. The birds didn't get that far away. "Grew up in rural New York, and we definitely didn't have a farm, just a lot of forest."

[blueskying]

The pen has low walls, suitable for birds that have even less flight ability than many other chickens. There are some silkies and other fat, fluffy breeds in there already. Either someone else is gathering chickens or not all the birds made a break for it.

"I did some of that, once upon a time. I'm still not really fond of deer, but they taste good." He grins lopsidedly. "Don't tell my congregation. The assistant minister loves them and it'd break her heart."

He comes to the edge and lowers the chicken he's got before dropping it. It chatters to itself or the others, shaking itself off.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Sam is slightly less gentle with his, dropping them in with a foot or two to spare, but the land just fine. "I don't even know who all is in your congregation," he answers with a lop-sided grin of his own. "But it'll be my secret. If anyone finds out, say they got you confused with me. There's only so many American ex-pilots around here."

[blueskying]

Silkies, Sky notes, still have some recognizable wing feathers, if not as well-formed as in other chickens. So they aren't entirely made of down.

"All old people look the same, anyway," he says, conspicuously covering his hooks with his left hand. "Much appreciated."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"So how you settling in, anyway?" Sam asks, turning away from the chickens in search of another animal or two that needs rounding up. "At the church." He knows he's still pretty new there, after all, and hasn't caught up much since he started actually preaching, or whatever they do at that particular church.