Last week might have been perfect for bananafish but not so much for chickens. Despite being regularly soaked with water (and eventually ensconced in the shower cubicle), they spent much of the heatwave panting. And, when they weren’t panting, they were attacking the weakest bird in the flock (pictured over the jump), which eventually lost most of its feathers. You can see in the photo that it’s got a deformed beak and so is smaller than the others (I guess it can’t eat as much).

In chicken society, one response to hard times is, it seems, a recourse to scapegoating. One suspects we’ll see more of this (amongst people, not chickens) as the recession properly begins.