The La Chaise chicken house is worthy of a picture postcard. It is not very high, roof tree about two metres from the ground level, wide roofs slope down to thick walls way less than a metre high. There is a skylight in the flat mechanical terra cotta roof tiles and a small wired window in the 40 cm thick walls.. The cock crows with daylight - some times before. The roof is partly covered with a profusion of dog roses. All that is missing to make the picture perfect is a short person in old-fashioned clothes, straw hat, and a basket of eggs.
A chicken house is seldom a salubrious place Not just because chickens shit# without moderation. Experienced chicken keepers manage to put a replaceable plank or thick cardboard under the perches to collect most of the muck and change it regularly. There are also spider webs with accumulated dust and debris in them. There will probably be rat or mice droppings if careless chicken keepers have thrown in chunks of hard bread. These are often disease bearing for humans as well as fowl. Scraps of dank feathers will be scattered as a result of chicken squabbles, along with the rotten rejects of unconsumed vegetables. The lid of the laying box can drop on clumsy fingers.
All in all not a desirable place to be explored by small children. Hence Oma's frequent greeting to the small grandsons: NO GOING IN THE CHICKEN HOUSE!!
This,of course, is regularly ignored especially once all the other forbidden or nearly forbidden places have been visited.
But to see the glow of joy and triumph on their faces, almost reverent, as they come out of the chicken house, each carrying most carefully one egg in their cupped palms, proffering it to the adult in triumph - all is forgiven.
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