I received a call from my Tasmanian correspondent the other day. This is unusual as she will usually go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid having anything to do with me. There was obviously something up, her cheeks were flushed and there was an air of suppressed excitement about her.
"You'll never guess what's happened," she announced.
"Has somebody in Tasmania discovered fire?"
She invited me to do creative things to myself with a garden hose and I thought the conversation might be over but she was obviously bursting to tell someone, I presumed her family were all out of town.
"There has been drama," she announced portentiously. "There have been police, firearms, a helicopter and chickens." For a moment I thought she must have got hold of video of my last birthday party but no, this was all new drama.
The story began innocently enough with my correspondent hard at work (that's her story and she's sticking to it) when the clatter of a helicopter woke her up, I mean disturbed her at her labours. A rescue helicopter was circling overhead so vigorously that she could almost see the pilot throwing up over the side. "Ah," I thought, "here is a tale of someone lost in Hobart's outer suburbs (which are about a two minute drive from the inner suburbs) and needing aerial assistance." But no gentle reader for in a stunning plot twist it turned out that the helicopter had been hired by the Hobart police for use in a pursuit operation. I guess in the meantime people just had to rescue themselves.
It turns out that an individual took offence to police questions about his possession of firearms and leapt into his car in an ill advised attempt to flee justice or at least the police. Drawn by some invisible compulsion this malefactor had raced in the direction of my correspondents home while the police frantically chased and phoned a rescue helicopter for back up. This makes as much sense as a surgeon seeking the assistance of a parking attendant for an appendectomy but my correspondent swears its true.
Eventually a series of spikes across the road brought the careening vehicle to a halt (ok I don't know if the vehicle was careening, forgive me for trying to inject a little colour into the story and actually careening involves beaching a wooden ship so you can scrape barnacles off the hull so maybe just ignore it completely) but the excitement didn't end there. His vehicle having failed him the suspect (actually pretty certain) leapt into a pair of legs and continued to flee. He didn't get far however. Spotting a convenient henhouse he threw himself inside it and attempted to conceal himself among the feathers. Fortunately for those of you who are supporters of law and order the police in Hobart are smarter than that (just) and were not fooled by the sudden disappearance of their quarry.
With a helicopter overhead and a drone buzzing nearby (its not entirely clear whether this was a police drone or just someone hoping to catch a glimpse of a neighbour in a bikini) heavily armed police stormed the henhouse in the most over the top assault since the ATF took down the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. There was drama, shouting, drone buzzing, sirens, lights and all of the usual elements of state sponsored excitement. One individual alone kept a clear head amid the chaos. A chicken sitting on her eggs simply remained there incubating with enviable calm as a bunch of individuals supposedly far higher up the evolutionary tree went nuts around her. The man was eventually dragged out and charged with "everything". I have it on good authority that the chicken's name is Scruffy.
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