In which I do battle…

Warning: The following post may contain strong nerd language which may be unintelligible to the average reader.

There is a lot of dust in Burkina Faso and it seems a lot of it tries very hard to make a home in my apartment. There is constantly a layer of dust on every surface in my house except maybe my bed. And even there after a couple days you can shake the mosquito net hanging over my bed and a shower of fine dust particles go showering down. I’m sure that’s healthy for my respiration system.

To counter this I do my best to dust and sweep my apartment whenever I can, which varies in frequency from a couple times a day to a couple times a week depending on the week. Luckily I don’t have too much floor space and do my best to make sure I keep things off of the floor. When it’s all said and done I have a nice collection of dust in my dustpan which I throw outside, just begging the wind to blow it back in my house over the course of the next couple days.

I was planning to dumb the dust in one of the small gardens at the base of my porch. As I emptied the pan over the small wall I jumped back as a fury of brown and red shot straight up in the air from below with a loud “BAACAAAACK!” A mother hen with feathers puffed out to the max, wings locked in attack position and a crazy look in her eyes came straight at me.

Luckily from my many days spent collecting Crushbone Orc Belts in gfay (Greater Faydark) and crush the shock of aggoing a mob quickly wore off and I assumed battle stance. I was a little bit worried because I was only wearing cloth, was OOM, and my Fine Plastic Dustpan and Brush weren’t exactly fear-inspiring but I didn’t have too much time to worry about it as she attacked.

I blocked the first attack, using the dustpan as a sort of shield and in combination with the brush tried to push her back gently. I felt that she was one of those stupid mobs that if you actually killed would cause you to lose a lot of hard earned faction, in this case probably with the Frères. As she attacked again my mind began to try and think of the nearest place to zone. I guess I usually did stop in place for a while when entering the compound, but that was too far away and I didn’t have SoW. I decided to try walking into my house and closing the screen door.

I quickly realized the folly of my action as she banged head first into the screen door, which I felt probably wasn’t able to hold up to much punishment. Opening the door again and staving off another attack I prayed that she was more like a WoW mob – limited aggro range – and ran toward the kitchen. Looking back I was relieved to see that she wasn’t following me.

I waited a while, watching from out of aggro range as she moved away from the house, taking with her 12 peeping little chicks. If a mother hen gets this defensive about her chicks I would hate to get between a mama bear and her cubs!

I copied my chat log here for your enjoyment.

Bovard has dropped 8 ounces of dust.
Mother Hen becomes enraged.
Mother Hen uses Battle Cry! Mother Hen’s Attack Power is increased!
Bovard blocks Mother Hen’s attack!
/w Bubs Dude I aggroed one of the stupid chickens, you want to send me a port?
Player ‘Bubs’ not found.
Bovard blocks Mother Hen’s attack!
/who friend
0 player(s) found.
Bovard blocks Mother Hen’s attack!
/y “Where is the nearest zone?”
No one hears you.
Bovard blocks Mother Hen’s attack!
/con
Looks like a reasonably safe opponent.
Bovard blocks Mother Hen’s attack!
Bovard tries to use Hide. It fails!
Mother Hen attacks a screen door for 2 dmg!
Bovard blocks Mother Hen’s attack!
Bovard uses sprint.
Battle Cry fades from Mother Hen.
Mother Hen is no longer enraged.