Firie leaves heartwarming note for homeowners about their ‘frazzled chickens’
A firefighting crew have been given a rowdy reception by some hungry hens after arriving at a home that had miraculously avoided being flattened by ferocious a bushfire.
While the house’s occupants fled long before the fire front’s approach, their chickens had been left behind - and long enough to build up a sturdy appetite.
So when a Kurrajong RFS firefighter named Lucy, along with her dad and younger brother, arrived at the property, being threatened by the massive Gospers Mountain fire, northwest of Sydney, the chooks were understandably “frazzled”.
In a post to her Facebook blog page Four Times the Madness, Lucy wrote of her heartwarming act to calm the “feathered champions” down and reassure them their humans were “coming home soon”.
She said she slid her boots off and crept into the unlocked home in her socks and managed to locate a loaf of bread - joking that “unless the chooks were gluten free like my baby brother” they should be ok.
“I left a note on the kitchen bench - it felt like I was intruding on this families sacred space. I exited, gently closed the door, and shoved my exhausted feet back into the black heavy boots once more,” her blog post read wrote.
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She shared a photo of the letter, which read: “Hey home owners, we were tasked here at your place and your chooks seemed a bit frazzled so I took some bread to feed them.
“Sorry if they are gluten free.”
Lucy said she was initially concerned the chickens might be too spooked to come and claim their meal, but her fears were quickly erased.
“I shouldn’t have worried, those feathered champions came tearing out of the scrub like a crim running from the police. I think I made friends for life,” she wrote in her post.
“The bread didn’t last long, I even got to give one a hug. ‘Don’t worry little mate, I’m sure they’re coming home soon’”.
Up to eight properties were lost in Lithgow as the edge of the massive Gospers Mountain fire moved west on Sunday, possibly one reason the family was able to safely return to their home.
The 450,000-hectare Gospers Mountain fire was thought to have destroyed up to 20 homes in total.
The areas worst hit included Lithgow and along the Bells Line of Road in the upper Blue Mountains, and the Wollondilly Shire villages of Buxton and Bargo.
Very high fire danger warnings are in place for nine NSW regions with temperatures across western Sydney and on the city's fringe likely to top 35C on Saturday.
Fires are banned in the open in the southern ranges, southern slopes and Monaro alpine areas of NSW.
The Bureau of Meteorology expects the fire danger to continue escalating into next week, as heat and dry winds increase.
Temperatures are expected to peak on Tuesday, with New Year's Eve forecasts of more than 40C across western Sydney and in regional NSW.
The rising temperatures come after firefighters spent the past five days striving to contain large and complex bushfires before conditions worsen.
This fire season two firefighters have been killed and as many as 1000 NSW houses destroyed.
Almost 1300 firefighters were in the field on Friday as 70 bush and grass fires continued to burn, with more than 30 blazes yet to be contained.
With AAP
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