THE topic somehow got to hypnotising chooks. The little girl next door at the menagerie can do it. I can't.

But it did remind me of the experiment I ran to get our chooks drunk one February arvo.

It was my 19th birthday but I was babysitting Grandma on the farm and celebrations were solitary and confined to a sneaky few bottles of beer.

Grandma wouldn't be sharing a stubby, so it struck me as suitably convivial to tip out our couple of old chooks' water and tip in some beer.

It was a hot day, I figured they'd come to the party.

Meanwhile I jumped in the old Triumph paddock-bomb and headed up the back road a few k's to the creek for a swim.

The long dry grass of the paddock, approaching the red gum-lined creek, hid red volcanic rocks that turned out to be my undoing.

Refreshed after my dip, in fact perhaps a little heavily refreshed by now, I went a bit wide on the track, into the grass, and caught the top of a rock on the bottom of the radiator that pushed back into the fan, taking a circular swathe out of it and jamming the motor. It also broke a radiator hose.

"Excellent," I thought.

Me half-smashed and the car fully smashed, but I didn't quite give up.

A bit of wood propped from the radiator-bottom back to a divot dug in the dirt allowed me to crank the car back a few centimetres on the starter motor and push the radiator out of the fan.

I replaced the broken hose with a vent hose from the heater that happened to fit and then set to with an ancient first-aid kit that was floating about in 20 years of junk in the boot, and patched up the numerous leaks with adhesive bandage.

I topped her up from the creek and with a rich assortment of containers filled with water, then headed homewards, stopping at every dam for replenishment.

The sun was sinking behind me as the old car groaned through the gate and rolled to a steaming stop in the yard.

Not only had I got it home, I hadn't quite cooked it and, with one thing and another, I was sort of pleased.

Now, what about the chooks?

The beer was all gone but they seemed fairly sensible.

Whatever they got up to when the party was in full swing I'll never know. It's probably fortunate they hadn't gone for a hoon down to the creek.

They know bugger-all about cars.