Three of my lovely bantams have been cruelly plucked from this mortal coil by the fox. After years of casing the coop, it finally pushed its way through the mesh to my beautiful girls roosting peacefully on their perch and killed them swiftly, violently and unnecessarily. I’m trying, unsuccessfully, not to imagine how frightened they must have been, fluttering awake and into the jaws of death.

I heard it happen, but in a semi-awake 2am fug, thought it was cats fighting, which always sets Dolly off. Then it dawned on me it wasn’t squawking cats I could hear; it was squawking chickens. I was wide awake in seconds, flinging the ‘Snow Leopard’ (Bet Lynch-esque dressing gown) around me, rushing down to the kitchen, fumbling with boots. Heart pounding now, I opened the door.

Dolly was gone in the blink of an eye, running straight to the end of the garden. All I could hear was the dog barking. The hens had fallen silent. I followed behind at a sprint, but when I reached the door of the run, I could see immediately that I was too late. The broken bodies of the bantams were strewn across the floor. And the fox was still inside. I think it must have been on the roof of the hen’s house but it was too dark for me to see. In the chaos, Dolly was going mad with excitement and I felt a rush of air as the fox legged it past me through the coop door and out into the garden, Dolly in (ultimately futile) pursuit.

Only a matter of seconds had passed since I’d run down the garden when Eddie arrived with a torch which threw the carnage into harsh reality. Una, Bean and Michonne lay dead, probably killed instantly. They would have been completely vulnerable as they fluttered to the ground into the jaws of the waiting fox. Carol was curled up in a ball, still and silent by the door. I touched her back gently. She was alive.

As Dolly chased the fox over the wall and away, Eddie helped pick up the poor dead bantams while I put Carol in a small box lined with straw and closed the lid. We put her in the pantry overnight, fully expecting her to die of shock in the night.

But in the morning, by some miracle, as Eddie tentatively opened the lid of Carol’s hospital box we found her still alive. I transferred her gently back the scene of the carnage, feathers everywhere, and placed her in one of the nesting boxes. Checking back after breakfast, still expecting her to have given up the ghost, she had moved to a perch. By the time I left for work she had ventured outside, but she was very quiet and her tail feathers drooped. She was miserable about her lost friends. As was I.

Beautiful faverolle Una, with her lustrous black plumage, bushy, feathery beard and bright dark eyes. She was always the first one to run towards me when I came up to see them. She loved bread above all things.

Shy Bean, Una’s best friend. Who’d hide her head under Una’s breast feathers to pretend she wasn’t there and hated being picked up.

Michonne the mum. My rumpless Araucana who was always checking up on everyone, full of curiosity, making sure I was cleaning the coop out properly, hanging the water high enough. She’d hop over the back fence for a bit of a run round the garden, then return back to her friends.

My poor little bantams, they didn’t deserve what happened to them, and I wish I’d woken up sooner and realised what was happening sooner. Maybe I could have saved them.

But we did save Carol, Michonne’s wing woman. A fluffy-headed, enormous, brainless Araucana. The last bantam standing. She is miserably unhappy without her friends, but I will do my best to make sure she stays alive. And find her a new friend to keep her company. Chickens can’t be alone.

My beautiful bantams