Clucker
Chicken, and yes, an ordinary farmyard hen would peck about your boots quite happily off-world without earning a bestiary entry. A clucker earns one because it never stops listening, head cocked at an angle a chicken's neck shouldn't manage, even when it's eating, even when it's supposedly asleep on the perch.
What it's listening for isn't obvious until you've kept a run of them near your own house for a season. A clucker goes rigid, mid-peck, a full second before anything else in the yard reacts to a sound -- a footstep on the lane, a door two gardens over, the low hum a psycmask makes when its wearer's had a bad batch of biofeed. Then it screams, one long ragged note that isn't the ordinary cluck-and-flap alarm of a normal hen, and every other clucker within earshot picks it up and passes it on.
It isn't dangerous to fight. Half a stone of feathers and bad temper, easily seen off with a boot. The risk is what a clucker's scream draws, because that note carries a long way, and whatever else is listening in Hellsborough tends to come and check what set it off.
I keep three. I have stopped asking what they hear that I don't, and started simply trusting the scream when it comes.
Field note: keep cluckers if you can. The scream is an early warning worth more than the eggs.
| Type | Listener |
| HP | 1 |
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