Locals who keep chickens fight a constant battle to fend off foxes. In 1860’s Daylesford, the fight was the same – only the villain was different!

From the pages of The Daylesford Express of Saturday 31 August 1861:

Mrs O’Loughlin, who resides in Paddy’s Gully, in a situation nearer to a shanty than a church, is a widow in snug circumstances, having, independently of a little vegetable garden she cultivates herself, a large number of fowl that enable her by bartering their eggs with the storekeeper to obtain from him such liquids and solids as she stands in need of. 

The solitary creature would, under these circumstances, have been contented with her lot if the propensities of the Chinamen to transfer other people’s fowl to their own unsavoury flesh-pots had not kept her in constant dread of being made the victim of such a flagitious (sic) proceeding.

As she was kind to her birds for the sake of their eggs and the exhilarating comforts she received in exchange for them, she knew they would do battle upon any piratical attempt being made upon their roost and to the noise of their resistance awakening her she trusted as her only hope of averting the loss she feared.

Last Wednesday morning, as the moon was rising, she was awakened by the signal of alarm, and quickly stepped out of bed; but not knowing the strength of the enemy – she could encounter a single Chinaman or even two small fellows – she peeped through the slit of the tent door to reconnoitre.  The result was that she saw one Chinaman in rushing out of the hen shed knock down another who was on tip-toe stealing in.

Mrs O’Loughlin then at once gave tongue and sallied out with a thick stick in hand; but nimble John had got out of sight, and his prostrate countryman had picked himself up, and got so far off that the rolling stick miscarried as a missile aimed at his head.  Mrs O’Loughlin said that the two blackguards visited her hen shed for the same wicked purpose but without complicity; and to the approach of the second alarming the first she must partly ascribe her escape from loss; but to the loud cackling of her birds in the first instance she attaches the most importance, as being the providential means of her salvation.

From the Daylesford and District Historical Society.  https://daylesfordmuseum.net/