'You can take the girl out of the farm.......

Living in a cul-de-sac rather than on a croft you'd think I'd be content to keep my menagerie down to a couple of budgies. But we've always had dogs and cats (currently two of each) plus I've a rabbit named pii, (pun intended).  But, still on the lines of growing my own food, I wanted to branch out a bit.  Deciding that the neighbours might be a trifle nervous if faced by a couple of hefty beef cattle at the gate, I opted for hens. I was assured that they took little care apart from daily food and water and a weekly scrub out of the hen house. 
I was delighted by the girls, Henrietta, Margo, Loquisha and Mrs Cluck.  They are like nosy Victorian ladies with feathered bustles.  Any movement in the garden has to be investigated immediately and the sight of them running across the lawn, feathers akimbo, is a hoot.  They all have different personalities, Mrs Cluck, despite being the smallest is the Queen Pin of the hen house.  Margo, unlike her namesake Mrs Ledbetter, is the shyest, Henrietta by far the friendliest, sitting on my lap, my shoulder and whenever possible coming into the house.  But it was Loquisha who was taken ill. 
I first noticed she was under the weather when she took to hiding in the bushes, tail down, refusing to eat.  I watched her carefully for a day, leaving food and water within reach but it was no good.  She was clearly poorly. 
Faced with the possibility of losing one of my feathered friends and unsure as to what a vet could do, I phoned a hen keeping friend who told me she was probably egg bound and the treatment was to steam her gently and then dose her with liquid paraffin. 
Putting out of my mind the image of her fixing me with a beady and disappointed stare from under the lid of the stock pot, I decided on a course of action.
Using the bathroom as a sick bay I thrust her into a wicker cat basket and placed this over a tray of hot water on the floor.  Then I turned on the shower.  After repeating the treatment  a couple of times to keep the room steamy I let her out of the basket in case she wanted to eat or lay an egg.  She had other ideas and hid behind the loo. 
Next I filled a syringe with the liquid paraffin, retrieved Loquisha and sat her on my lap.  I held her with my left arm, facing away from me, tried to open her beak and fired the syringe.
I apologised to her, wiped the paraffin from her eye and feathers and from my jumper, refilled the syringe and went for Take 2.
Paraffin doesn't taste very nice really.  I could quite understand why she had turned her head at the critical moment, altering my line of fire and causing the stuff to go into my face.  I put her down, washed my face and cleaned my teeth, filled the syringe yet again, managed to extract her from under the waste pipe and went for Take 3, but hens are really amazingly strong.  I hadn't realised that she would have the energy to escape my grasp and flap across the room, given that she wasn't well in the first place.  And it's surprising how sticky paraffin is when it's all over the carpet.  But by now I was determined.  It was for her own good after all, even if she was convinced I was trying to poison her.
And Take 4 was a success.  The medication went into her beak, she swallowed and then turned her head to look at me, her expression clearly indicating that if I EVER did that again she would go on production strike for a lifetime.
She did recover, albeit slowly.  She is back to egg laying, to foraging for the tastiest worms along with her sisters and has regained her place in the pecking order.  But has she forgiven me?  Well, they say elephants never forget but hens are descended from dinosaurs and trust me - they have very, very long memories.