Enter the chicken house at your own risk – that’s the sign that Michelle Cordell might need after it emerged that her feisty cockerel Dude led three companion hens into battle against an intruding fox. The result? One dead fox and four victorious featherweights.
Foxes beware. The chickens are fighting back.
Cordell, of Basildon, Essex, became aware of the unlikely coop coup when she discovered the vanquished fox in the chicken house during a routine egg collection.
“I was so shocked,” she explained to the Metro website. “When I went to the chicken coup they were all fine but, when I went to the other side, the fox was lying there dead.”
Striking a blow of revenge for chicken-kind against their historic enemy, it seems that Dude, along with hens Izzy, Pongo and the aptly named Pecky, knocked over a table which hit and dazed the young fox who was then mercilessly pecked to death.
Cordell described the scene of devastation that greeted her in the chicken house: “[The fox] had little blood marks on its legs that looked like they had been pecked. It had not been dead long. The fox was not a cub but it was only a young one and Dude and Izzy are big birds.”
The owner had lost a cockerel and a hen at the hands of a fox before Christmas, but it is not known if the culprit from that incident was the victim of the latest battle. However, a vigilante-style revenge attack cannot be ruled out.
Cordell sounded a warning for any fox considering tit-for-tat justice: “I reared Dude from a little chick and he has become very protective over the others. Now he is a murderer.”
No doubt Dude would reject that label and claim he was merely acting in self-defence. But one thing’s for sure: he’s cock o’ the walk now.
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