AS MUCH as I love getting up every morning to go to work at The Champion, I am one of the millions of Britons who don't really 'do' mornings.

My new alarm clock, then, should be a good idea. It is clean and eco-friendly in a sort of Good Life way, doesn't use any electricity at all and hasn't cost me a penny. Best of all it wakes me up, without fail, every single morning. The only problem is you never know when that time in the morning is.

Yep, the new arrivals into the quiet corner of Crossens I call home are a pair of chickens, and they do a damned good job of waking everyone up, even if it's 3.44am on a Saturday. The rooster in particular, I feel, is on commission for every decibal higher he manages to crow every time he gets woken up by any kind of light, which means more than just the rays of the sunrise. My neighbour's got a motion detector that can cast shadows on the moon, which means every time an insect crawls across his back yard the entire neighbourhood is treated to an ear-shattering reenactment of a Kellogg's Corn Flakes advert.

Clearly, the cockerel has got to go, but how do you get rid of a rooster which is not only incredibly annoying but doesn't belong to anyone? The RSPCA, when my neighbours rang, weren't interested, and the council say I have to keep a diary to officially record it being a pain in the backside before anyone will come out and collect it. Someone else suggested shooting it but that would instantly incur the wrath of every animal lover in The Champion office. Besides, we have laws in Britain against this sort of thing. Nor can I do the caring thing and drive it to the nearest animal sanctuary, because technically that involve breaking into one of my neighbours' gardens.

Then someone else suggested something particularly pointless; why not ring up the local paper with my plight? They'd clearly forgotten that I already write for The Champion, meaning I can't really use it to highlight the problem. I also doubt The Southport Visiter are going to be interested in covering a human interest story from someone who just happens to work as a reporter for a rival paper.

So my problem ends up here, hidden away on a Champion blog (although chances are you're probably reading this either on Facebook or via Twitter), and in handy hen-shaped form in a nearby back garden. If anyone has any ideas on how to deal with a noisy feral bird, for the sake of the sanity of an entire street, by all means let me know.

Answers on a postcard....

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