Corvus by Esther Woolfson

moulting.
    Chicken’s house, while beloved to her, is not beautiful. It’s a shanty house, a dwelling more suited to a favela than an otherwise elegant, high-ceilinged, corniced room. The favela house was constructed hastily by David years ago, when Chicken was moved from the rat room at the back of the house to this more central, sociable situation, an arrangement she appeared to welcome.
    The house, which stands on a worn, holed, raggy Persian rug of pink and dark blue, has a wooden back and door and sides of galvanised garden mesh. A metre high, a metre and a half long, it has stout, removable and, more importantly, washable plastic trays for the floor, which I cover every day with fresh newspaper. It has a wire door with hinges of wire and string. The door is rarely closed but if it is, during the cleaning of the floor perhaps, it is swiftly reopened thereafter by Chicken who pushes it triumphantly with her beak. She has a set of feeding dishes of white plastic with hooks, which I can attach to the wire of her wall. She can, equally, unattach them when, in response to whim, she decides that she would prefer her meal to beeaten from the floor. In spring, when her behaviour changes, she likes to carry the empty dishes in a clattering procession through the house. Often, it’s the first sign, the first small intimation, even on days in mid-February when fierce wind blows a few flakes of reluctant snow or on the grey, pouring days of early March, that beyond one’s own narrow perceptions of prolonged and dreary winters, others have already begun to scent and sense that the season is about to change.
    Two perches made from stout branches from the garden are secured on different levels, at different angles, on to small wooden brackets and held with screws. A passerine, a perching bird, her feet close as her ankles bend, the tension of the tendons curling her toes, which hold and tighten to keep her safe.
    On the floor are two large stones upon which Chicken likes to stand, as the stag in a Landseer painting, nobly, next to the water dish of heavy stoneware, which is also her bath.
    Hanging from the wire of the roof of the favela house there is a series of bells of different sizes and types which Chicken rings with the boundless, energetic enthusiasm of the church bell ringer, except that, in her case, protest rather than campanological fervour is her motivation, an expression of outrage or disgust, at the sound of music she doesn’t like, perhaps, or at the regular appearance of cleaning equipment, to which she holds stern, enduring objections.
    Chicken and I are both used to the favela house and although David often offers to improve it or to renew it completely, on Chicken’s behalf I decline. She’s not concerned with homeimprovements. She loathes change, reacts with terror, running to hide in the kitchen or behind the sofa in a torrent of loose-bowelled shouting, when one of her branches, unnotched from its moorings, falls down. She notices the smallest of changes to her environment and reacts with suspicion, fear and scowling resentment. When, a few months ago, I bought a cupboard for my papers to install in the study, Chicken was shut in the kitchen while furniture was shifted from place to place. There was, of course, no thought of moving the favela house. The room was reorganised around it, table moved from one side to the other, cupboard installed, lamps and pictures replaced, and when the room was satisfactorily restored to order, the door opened to allow Chicken to return. Her caution was total. She peered round the corner, hopped back, peered in again, a portion of beak, part of a small grey face appearing, retreating, reappearing, retreating again in the minute process of establishing that her house at least was untouched, in every manner and respect the same as when she left it. She looked with suspicion and probably contempt at our attempts at interior decor but, since her own establishment was intact, she