I HAVE seen more poultry in the past few months than in my five decades of life altogether.

I’m a former city girl who lives in the country and there’s still a lot to learn.

If you’d asked what kind of poultry was out there, I’d have said ‘duck, geese, chickens, turkeys and peacocks’ and I’d have said it with confidence.

Oh, dear me, silly city girl and your paltry poultry knowledge.

While at a local show a few months ago, my husband pestered me to check out the chook pavilion.

I’d never had a gander at chooks or checked the chooks and ganders out.

Silly goose, I walked in cocky, expecting to see birds in varying sizes sitting unimpressed inside cages.

They’d be the stereotypical image of whatever they were.

Ducks would be white and have light orange beaks; geese would also be white but with longer necks and the chickens would be wrapped in the packaging they came in before being roasted at the supermarket … aka feathers.

No, nope and nup.

What an amazing sight and I kicked myself for missing out on the spectacle that is the poultry section.

First of all, some of these creatures look like nightmare beings conjured up in a Stephen King horror movie.

There are these large fleshy ornamental pieces of flesh attached to their foreheads.

Those ‘pieces’ look a little bit like a wax stamp from the olden days that carried a design and was melted on envelopes to seal them.

There was a chook breed I call the ‘Robert Smith’ after The Cure’s frontman.

It has a big mop of black and grey feathers that fluff around its head as if the feathers had been purposely teased.

It looked suitably annoyed too, just like the goth singer.

I learned ducks get big, a lot bigger than I’d realised and that not all poultry can fly.

I found that last bit disappointing. What’s the point of having wings if you can’t fly.

Then again, humans have two legs and we get about in a car rather than put mileage on our pins.

I’ve decided I like poultry; I like that there are different breeds and the odd looking ones are the best.

Maybe one day I’ll buy the one that looks like Robert Smith … it’s a cool looking chick and the cure for a gloomy day for sure.