The genetic strains of a gun dog run deep. Even in those who have never actually stridden alongside a deerstalker wearing gentleman with a half cocked gun over his arm, still know that, somewhere in their very core, they are alive for one reason; to chase birds. Ask a Spaniel (a talking one if available) what his Unique Selling Point or his Raison d’être is and he will surely answer:
“My ability to chase, catch and bring back a dead, or dying, bird for my master.”
Sonny the Black Menace, my client, comes from a long line of noble bird wranglers. Both his mother and father are celebrated gun dogs. Indeed his pedigree name is Stones Frolic, which I believe is Latin for “Nimble Bird Worrier”. “See bird, chase bird” is the motto under his family’s coat of arms although he himself has chosen a different career path, that of a family pet.
Now, I put it to you, that the non farming, converted farmhouse dwelling yuppies who thought it would be charming to get themselves some free range chickens maybe didn’t think their decision through. Perhaps they had seen a few episodes of 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life” or had lately been ruminating over the success of television food expert and novice freeholding celebrity farmer Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Their motivations for keeping chickens matter not. Their execution (if you pardon the pun) of their chicken keeping methods, most certainly do.
Each day in this land thousands of chickens are caught and eaten by foxes. Some of those chickens are even in coops, where a resourceful and hungry fox will dig underneath chicken wire to get at his terrified prey. Chickens allowed to wander outwith their coop into neighbouring gardens, roads and public areas will not last long. In fact, these wandering chickens face a double risk. In addition to hungry foxes they may also come into contact with frisky cocker spaniels, who although not hungry, are at the mercy of their genes and have no option but to bolt from their masters, ignoring the futile human calls of “Sonny! Noooooo! ” to seize their feathered freaky orange-eyed quarry.
Somewhere out there is a bald arsed cockerel who knows this all too well. And my client has apologised to him fully. Something, you may note, a fox would never do.
But before you deliberate, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I pose only one question to you:
If you were a cocker spaniel born to chase avian creatures, what would you have done, confronted with five stupid chickens spilled out into the path of your usual walk?
This is an except from the closing argument of defence lawyer, Alan Shore, of Crane, Poole and Schmidt , the firm portrayed by TV’s Boston Legal for his client, Sonny The Black Menace, who stands accused of ripping the tailfeathers out of a chicken’s bottom.
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April 5, 2009. Alan Shore, Boston Legal, chickens, chickens with no tail feathers, Sonny, The Black Menace. .
