HAPPINESS HIRED

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32779, 2 December 1971, Page 2

HAPPINESS HIRED

(N.Z. Press Association? TAURANGA, December 1. Thanks to a Tauranga hire firm, a hen which earlier this year escaped the pot has the opportunity for a glorious courtship. She belongs to Warren Ofsofke, aged 12, -f Mount Maunganui, who yesterday called Tauranga Hire Services and asked for a rooster.

“At first I thought he was joking,” said Mr C. Porter, an employee who answered the call. “But when he convinced me, I told him we’d get it.” Being wakened at 4 a.m. is no joke, and that is why Warren called on the hire firm.

“The hen we’ve got has been playing up a bit over the last four days, and we thought she was sick. Then we discovered she wanted a man around the house,” he said. He had no particular reason for asking a hire firm to find him a rooster, said Warren. “Mum didn’t believe they would be able to get me one, but I saw they hired ail sorts Of things and decided to try.” The tongshot paid off. Mr Porter rang his brother at Te Puna poultry farm, where there was a rooster destined for slaughter this Friday.

Then a hire agreement was signed calling for

payment of 50c a week by Warren “until things settle down.”

Mr H. Bryant, owner of the hire firm, said that over the four years he had been in business in Tauranga he had received some unusual requests.

“But this one,” he said, “really takes the cake.” Warren said that early this year , the hen was intended for the family's dinner table after she was found nearly dead from a dog’s attack on a relative’s farm.

“We put her in the boot of the car to take home,” he said, “but when we got there she was very much alive, so we just kept her.”