My daughter moved to Canberra in January. Not long after, we made arrangements to visit her for her birthday at the end of May. Since then, delays in the sale of our house have meant that settlement, and our subsequent move to a new house, have ended up coinciding with our return from Canberra. It was likely to be a hectic few days.

My anxiety levels were already at ‘eleven’ before landing in Canberra. I spent the entire flight worrying about all the things I had to do when we got back. My daughter, E, and her boyfriend met us at the airport. They then proceeded to argue all the way to our hotel. Canberra is a small city, but its road system is designed to cause the maximum frustration and confusion. Often, traveling from point A to point B is no simple matter. E and her boyfriend argued about the best way to get to our hotel, then about their comparative driving skills. By the time we got to our hotel I needed some tranquilizers and a soft pillow.

We were only in Canberra for five days, but it seemed a lot longer. Every morning I woke at 3.00am and lay huddled in the freezing dark worrying about things I had forgotten to do at home, or imagining all the things that could go wrong on ‘moving day’. I imagined the removalist’s van bursting into flames. I imagined them not turning up at all, and our possessions left by the side of the road. By the time I got up I felt sick. I spent the rest of the day stumbling around like a zombie.

Concerned about my debilitating anxiety, my daughter gave me a hypnosis cd that promised to provide peace and tranquility. I listened to it in the evening after we’d returned to our hotel room. A monotone voice soon lulled me to sleep. Unfortunately, I still woke up at 3.00am the next morning. I didn’t feel at all tranquil or peaceful. I was cold, tired and pissed off. I tried listening to it a few more times and either fell asleep or developed a headache.

Meanwhile, our time in the national capital passed pleasantly enough. We visited galleries, museums, restaurants, shops and monuments. We also went to Cockington Green, a village of miniature buildings. I wasn’t as awful as you might imagine, although I did find myself fighting the urge to impersonate Godzilla and stomp on the little people and buildings.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I relaxed the entire time I was in Canberra. It wasn’t the fault of the city or my daughter or even the hypnosis cd. I just couldn’t stop worrying about the upcoming move. From the moment we arrived back in Adelaide I was busy packing and making lists of things to do.

On the day of the move itself I awoke at 5.00am. By the time the removalists arrived at 8.00 I had all of our possessions ready to load into the van. I’d done everything but actually drag the stuff down the driveway. The removalists were two beefy guys who made moving enormous pieces of furniture looking simple. I tended to heighten this impression by attempting to move things on my own and appearing weak and pathetic. Within an hour or so they had everything we owned stacked neatly into the back of their truck.

Of course, the van didn’t burst into flames, and everything was delivered to our new address and unloaded without incident. That night I slept more soundly that I had for several weeks.

I have to remind myself that worrying doesn’t achieve much besides encourage stomach ulcers, tension headaches and wrinkles. And the things I worry about never actually happen… do they?

We’d counted on capturing the chicken on Sunday morning, assembling nets, boxes and a foolproof plan. However, on Saturday night a fierce storm struck the city. I was home alone trying to concentrate on a writing project, but I spent more time worrying about the chicken. The rain verged on torrential, falling in cascades from the guttering above the carport, and the wind was so strong it blew the rain straight in at the lounge room windows.

It was after 10.00pm when I finally decided to go out into the storm and find the chicken. I couldn’t imagine it living through the night. Apart from the wind and rain, the temperature had dropped sharply. It was icy cold. I put on two layers of clothing and some thick boots. Our one torch was broken, so I opened my bedroom windows and switched all the lights on in an effort to throw some light on the chicken’s hiding place. But once outside it made no difference. I could see nothing. The wind and rain whipped at my face, and the bushes and vines in the front yard slashed at my face and tangled round my legs.

On my first attempt, I scrambled around the base of the bush. I’d seen the chicken nestled right up against the plant, and imagined this providing the best shelter against the weather. Visibility was so poor I could only scrape around blindly in the bark and leaves, hoping to scare her into the open. But she was nowhere to be found. Already drenched and cold, I retreated to the house to reconsider my approach.

Maybe she had gone in search of shelter elsewhere. Maybe she had finally gone home. I had to be sure.

I ventured back out into night, but this time approached the bush from the front. Here the garden sloped up sharply from the road. I clambered up the slippery incline and grabbed at the lower branches, pulling myself up the final metre or so. I pushed my way into the bush; its wet leaves scratching at my face. Almost immediately I spotted the chicken, a dark shape against a darker sky. She was huddled in the higher branches, a bedraggled, forlorn figure. At first I thought her beyond my reach. I leant against the branches in front of me and reached out with both hands. Any moment now she would leap into the air, squawk and disappear.

But I moved steadily and surely, and grabbed the bird with both hands. She struggled momentarily, but without much energy, and I was able to get to the house without dropping her, or falling over on the slippery ground. I placed her gently into the pet carrier I’d had waiting by the door and took her inside.

The poor thing was absolutely drenched, and for the first ten minutes or so, I thought I might have been too late to save her. But as she dried off and become familiar with her surroundings, she gained energy. Within half an hour she was hopping about the cage and clucking enthusiastically. Later on, when I attempted to clean up a fresh chicken turd, she scrambled over my shoulder and flew across the room. After several minutes of chasing her in circles I came to the conclusion that she was not about to die.

The next morning, we took her back to her home. I was surprised to discover that her owner was not nearly as old or disabled as L had described him. In fact, he seemed just as capable as me of catching the bird. In any case, he led us through his ramshackle yard to a makeshift chicken hutch. Scrambling and scurrying in and around the hutch were several little hens like ‘ours’ and a more colourful rooster. When ‘our’ chicken spotted her friends and relations, she began clucking with excitement. She was out of the pet carrier before I could even finish opening the door, and joined the other chickens in a silly little dance about the hutch floor. It was a nice moment.

I was still pretty annoyed with the chicken’s owner. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t made a greater effort to retrieve his pet. But he said he was pleased and seemed sincere. He even offered us free karate lessons.

Early one morning, in that blissful pre-alarm semi-sleep state, I heard a clucking outside my window. For a moment I thought I had dreamt the sound, but I opened my eyes, rolled over, and the sound persisted. The window is an arm’s length away from my bed; so I dragged myself towards it, propped myself up on my pillow, and poked open the Venetian blind with my fingertips. Now there wasn’t any doubt. There was a chicken in my front yard. It clucked away happily to itself while scratching through bark chips and under bushes. It was a small red bantam hen, its feathers an almost metallic bronze in the morning sun.

When my cat discovered the chicken, it scrambled up to the window and forced its way through the blind, leaving its rear legs and twitching tail on my side, while salivating against the glass. Meanwhile, I ate breakfast, showered and dressed for work. By the time I walked out to the car, the chicken was nowhere to be seen. It was almost as if I had dreamt it.

But the next morning it was back again, clucking and scratching just outside my bedroom window. I discovered that after its morning feed, the chicken would climb into a nearby bush, where it would roost on the higher branches for the rest of the day. I began to worry that it wasn’t getting enough to eat, and began leaving breadcrumbs on the ground around the bush where it hid. My daughter, L, built a hutch out of boxes and left it near the bush in the hope that the bird would crawl inside to keep warm.

The chicken was still outside my window on the weekend, so L and I set about trying to find its home. We each took a different street and began knocking on doors. I didn’t think that the question – “Do you keep chickens, or do you know of anyone who does?” – was that weird, but judging by the looks and responses I got, I may have been mistaken. One woman looked at me with the kind of face one would reserve for someone from another planet.

L had similar experiences, however, at her third house, she got lucky. She was told that an old man in the adjoining street kept bantams. She found the house, knocked on the door, and was greeted by an elderly man who moved stiffly with the aid of a walking stick. It was, indeed, his hen, although he hadn’t noticed it missing, nor did he display any gratitude that we had found it. He explained to L that he was crippled and could not come to collect the hen. He asked that we catch and return it to him.

I was relieved to find the chicken’s home, but less than enthused by its owner’s response. Nevertheless, we set out to try and capture the bird. Our first attempt failed miserably, and the chicken simply flew into a nearby tree and refused to come down until we’d left. We then developed strategies involving boxes, blankets and a variety of disguises, but the chicken was too quick for us, and we only succeeded in scaring it into an adjoining yard. This arrangement suited me fine, but L was not impressed. “We can’t just leave it there,” she whined. She needn’t have worried. Within a couple of minutes it was back in our garden.

A new week started, and the chicken was still living in the bush outside my window. Every morning I would wake to its silly clucking. I would get up, feed the cat, and then shuffle outside to feed the chicken. It came to expect me, and would wait on the doorstep, do a little dance when I opened the door, then dash back to its hiding place in the bush, until I’d left its food and gone back inside. Begrudgingly, I grew to like the chicken, and looked forward to saying “hello” to it when I came home from work each day, and when I got up in the morning.

Some mornings it would climb up on my windowsill and peer in at me. This would excite our cat greatly and it would climb up and press its nose against the window. The chicken didn’t seem to mind. In fact, it almost seemed to be taunting the cat.

On Wednesday, the weather changed for the worse, and dark clouds blew in, along with a chilly wind. The chicken spent less time in the open, and more time in the shelter of its bush. I could see its football-shaped silhouette in the half-light of evening, perched on a branch in the middle of the bush, its little head bobbing nervously.

The following morning it did not greet me at the door, nor the morning after that. But I could still see it hiding in the bush. I’d bought some proper chicken food at a local pet store and left a pile of it on a sheltered patch of dry ground. The chicken eyed me cautiously from its hiding place. It seemed thinner than it had when it first arrived a week earlier. I hoped I was just imagining things. I really didn’t want to chicken to die.

It’s now early Saturday evening. The chicken is still out there. I can see a dark chicken-shape in the bush. I wonder if it’s cold or lonely. I wonder if it’s hungry. I worry about the wind and the rain. I worry that the chicken might not make it through the night.

All of a sudden the chicken is the most important thing in the world.