Part 2 of 2
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Red crept closer to the coops and smacked his lips. “It has been a very long time,” he thought to himself as he snuck around the coop, and slipped in through the slightly opened door.
The chickens were sleeping.
“There they are, all in a row and ready for my dinner.” The old fox felt overwhelmed at such a sight.
“So many to choose from!”
He crept towards a plump hen and readied himself for his quick escape.
Just then, and quite by instinct, the little sly fox, turned to his side, and facing him no more than a foot away, was none other than his old enemy, Bad the wolf.
Lime wasn’t sleeping.
He had decided to leave the house at night to scrounge around for kernels as he had done several times in his tiny life.
“Perhaps the hens hadn’t eaten all of them,” he thought to himself as he scratched the dirt of old man Barley’s farmyard.
As he was about to peck at a lone alfalfa seed, Lime heard a commotion coming from the coop, a commotion unlike any that he had ever witnessed in his tiny life.
He ran to the coop, up the ramp, and through the slightly opened door.
His little eyes never saw such a sight.
There before him were two great creatures fighting and rolling around on the coop floor.
Chickens and straw and feathers flying everywhere as the frightening event was taking place before him.
Lime started chirping and cheeping, afraid for his family and for the others then he suddenly realized that it was up to him to save them. He had to do something.
He remembered the bigger creature, the one that gives them the corn and seeds every day, the one that sings and protects them and makes their world peaceful and happy.
He turned around and ran out of the slightly opened door, down the ramp as fast as his little chick legs could carry him, fluttering his little wings behind him, and straight to old man Barley’s house.
Lime bumped into the side of the house, then started running along the length of it, until he reached the front steps.
He thought of his family and the others perhaps being taken away like in the stories that the older hens would tell.
Frantically, he fluttered up the stairs and straight through the broken dog door.
At that moment, the lights went on atop the stairs, and Lime heard the stirring of a bigger creature putting on shoes.
Lime cheeped and chirped at the top of his little chick lungs, fluttering and flapping back and forth across the wooden floor all of the time and making as much noise as he could make.
He was quite frantic and desperate.
Caroline was sleeping when she heard the noise coming from the yard.
In her mind, she had remembered the stories that her father had told about the wolves and foxes.
She also remembered the hounds that her father had bought to the farm that eventually caught most of the wolves and foxes and drove away the scant survivors.
But the hounds were long gone now, and Caroline, in her fear, found herself with the thought of having to face the intruder or intruders alone.
She ran our of her room, into the hallway, took up her father’s carbine from the wall, took three shells from a table, stuffed them into her pocket and bounded down the stairs.
At the bottom, she noticed something quite peculiar.
There, Caroline found a winded chick hobbling around across the floor.
“How did this ever get here?” she thought to herself as she picked up the chick, ran around into the kitchen, flung open the farm back door and headed towards the coop.
Red squeezed through two overturned nests and narrowly escaped the angry wolf’s bite. He knew that he didn’t stand a chance against his old enemy, as he darted past a tumbling chick and took a swipe at the wolf’s back.
Bad was very angry and irritated at the fox that he seemed to remember from the old days.
“When I catch you I am going to make a meal out of you, you can bet on it!” Bad thought to himself.
Red quickly decided that it wasn’t worth risking his life for a chicken meal, when a wolf was concerned, and started for the coop door. At that instant, he found himself face to face with the wolf’s gaping teeth.
Caroline put the frantic chick on another unused coop and shoved her hand into her pocket.
She fumbled for the three shells that she took for the carbine, and placed one of them in the rifle, just as the coop door flung wide open.
Out bounded the fox with the wolf on its tail.
Chickens and feathers were flying everywhere as Caroline fell back and landed in a puddle, dropping one of the last two shells.
The carbine dropped to the ground, and went off, blowing a hole in the side of the unused coop.
The poor little chick was thrown upwards two feet, and then fell back down onto the coop roof, cheeping and chirping frantically all along.
Just then the fox flew right over Caroline and tumbled to the ground with the raging wolf onto it.
Caroline reached for the carbine and fumbled loading it with the second shell, just as the wolf reached the fox.
She took aim and closed her eyes as she shot at the two intruders.
Most of the pellets scratched the fox, which with a last bit of energy, jumped onto an overturned bucket, and over the fence of the farm and disappeared into the scrub and the darkness.
The rest of the pellets hit the wolf, who now turned to face her as she sat frozen in the puddle with an empty carbine rifle in her hands.
Caroline saw the wolf dart at her as she fumbled at the mud for the last shell at the same time the chickens were clucking and in the distance the cows were mooing and a mule was braying.
In that instant she saw the wolf’s teeth as it rushed towards her and with lightning speed that could have only have been inherited from old man Barley himself, Caroline, forgetting her fears that had plagued her from childhood, loaded, aimed and shot.
Barley’s Farm was silent after the carbine did its job for the very last time.
It lay broken in the mud due to age and the force of that last shell.
Caroline stood up and looked around.
She noticed a trail heading out towards the fence and into the dark of the woods.
The old carbine had sent the wolf flying more than twelve feet before it gave itself up, and Caroline gazed at the woods and the trail that the wolf had left behind.
She took the chick from where she left it, and put it back in the good coop. The chickens and chicks, who had scattered, started to come back to the coop.
She picked up the broken carbine and checked the fence. Satisfied that the old wolf wouldn’t be coming back, she headed into the house with a smile on her face.
The chickens hadn’t lost anyone that day.
A couple of the hens made sure that everyone was accounted for.
Lime was exhausted from all of his hard work, and just lay there as the hens and chicks talked amongst themselves.
“It would seem that if it weren’t for our little Lime here, a couple of us would have been eaten for sure,” said one of the hens.
“Maybe even more than that” said another.
The chicks were still excited about the whole thing. It would become the great event of their little chick lives.
From that day on, none of the others complained if Lime would get to the corn and seeds first when Caroline would spread it across the yard for them.
He had saved the coop, he was their champion, and the other chicks looked up to him, and for a long, long time afterwards, he was known as the hero of the chicken war.
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