This is a gruesome tale so stop reading now if you’re the sensitive type. If you like to harbour delusions about the glamour of inner-city life best you too go; maybe order another vodka martini and come back later when we’ve finished.

Yesterday, Boef, (henceforth to be known as Boef-the-bad) killed the last of our poor little chooks. We do have plans to dog-proof the chook run next week but time-ran out for Ollie as it had for her sisters before her. There were no excuses this time for Boef. He had had a long walk and a rather nice brunch which included scraps from the weekend’s organic lamb roast and home-made gravy. And yet I came home after only a short outing to discover him standing over an inert Ollie with a “she-just-fell-into-my-mouth” expression on his face. Bad Boy Boef!

As if this wasn’t bad enough I later discovered the deceased had vanished. Boef has never ‘partaken’ of his victims before so I wasn’t sure whether she’d been eaten or interred. I was soon to find out.

Later that afternoon, as we all sat around the lounge room, Boef draped elegantly across the sofa, he started heaving. Before we could get him outside he had thrown up several bits of disgusting. It was immediately and painfully clear these bits were feathers and chook. Identifiable pieces of my favourite chook, whats more.

Our spiraling descent into a special sort of farm-yard hell continued hours later when the same thing occurred as the Flipster was having his bedtime story read. Boef, curled in his basket next to the Flipster’s bed, threw up a very particular sort of fur-ball; chook-feathers held together with dog poo.

The utter and complete horror of the evening has left me kinda numb. It’s Breugel meets Tom Waits and David Lynch in the farm-yard eerily lit by inner-city neon. A deserted chook house hauntingly silent against a backdrop of distant police sirens and the squeal of tyres.