Attack of the killer chicken!

I just got back from having breakfast at one of my favorite places. The San Marco cafe is a delightful oasis on a lonely road that runs through ranchland kind of in the middle of nowhere.
It is choc full of rustic charm, is attached to a feed store, and outside round the back there roam many peacocks, an emu and a very noisy goose, a few exotic looking chickens, and what was of particular interest to me, some amorous turkeys.

All puffed up and waddling around shaking themselves about like you might do to an umbrella all wet with rain before bringing it inside.
I was keen to sketch the masses their feathers made since I quite fancy making one, and I'm not sure how long they like to show off for.
The haystack on legs behind the turkey is the emu.
Anyhow, I noticed this cute little roostery/chicken thing following me about. Very brightly colored, he'd scratch about in the dirt while I got in position to make a few quick studies.
As soon as my attention was focused on the turkeys I felt this sharp flurry of activity around my ankle where something seemed to be attacking me.

I looked down, but there was only the little chicken, still scratching about.

I deduced, since it couldn't be anything else, it must have been upset that maybe I was in its way or something, so I rather thoughtfully used my foot to scrape away at the dirt so it could have a nice look around for some more of whatever it was eating.

Bad move!

It sprang into action transforming instantly into a blur of red and gold bouncing up and down attacking my lower legs with it's various sharply pointed bits, which seemed to be flying out from everywhere.
Then I would blink and he would turn back into a cute chickeny thing, scratching about harmlessly as if nothing was wrong.

'OK buster, you can have this area, I'll move away and sketch my turkeys from over there'.

No matter where I went, when ever I looked down, there was the little bastard, pretending to ignore me but always right there.
Just like an unstable and brightly decorated hand grenade, waiting to go off on me as soon as I showed an interest in the turkeys.

He seemed quite creepy now. Like some evil thing in a bad dream that you can't shake off. He had cold, cruel eyes. Easy to see that they evolved from dinosaurs.
I'd had enough, time to call it quits with barely a half dozen lines scratched on my page.
Maybe next time I'll try showing up with a handful of bird food to distract him.
Or maybe that would get him really mad! Who knows?
I guess I'll have to make do with photo's.

Oh well, at least I still have half my breakfast in the fridge for later, and a whole bunch of bronze mice to patina.

Speaking of mice, in collaboration with Miles at Anderson Enterprise, who's suggesting handy ways to achieve it safely, we're going to make a hood ornament out of Sprightly for my car.
Stay tuned for that one!