The Coop Troop is a gang of five unlikely heroes: Maggie, Flo, Clive, Billy and Jo d’Œuf.
For years, this rabbit, chicken, pig, lamb and egg lived together on a quiet, dull and boring farm, where nothing ever happened. Each of them is a big personality that just wasn’t meant for the daily chomp chomp poop – the mundane life of a farm animal. They had a bigger calling. They dreamed of a free range life of adventure, action, danger, and the occasional romance… but above all they dreamed of helping other animals – they wanted to be heroes!
After years spent secretly honing their skills, the five of them have become the one-stop shop to help any animal with a problem. They have converted Flo’s old chicken coop into an all-action souped-up Coop for this Troop. When the farmer’s back is turned, the Troop gets to work honing their hooves and polishing their paws in anticipation of their next mission. They just need to keep one thing in mind… to get back to the farm before feeding time at sunset so the farmer won’t notice that they’re gone!
As common farm animals, they’re very different from the domesticated animals, the pets that live in the neighbouring town of Animauville. The pets are spoiled rotten and don’t know how to do anything for themselves, so when their owners are away even a slight problem becomes a massive drama for them and they need help – quickly! When something goes wrong, the pets call The Coop Troop, who they really admire and see as adventurous, worldly-wise, practical and useful (even though we know different)! For The Coop Troop, being a spoilt pet would be even worse than the chomp chomp poop!
The chaos The Coop Troop cause is always completely accidental. They’re not hapless, but the mayhem they bring comes from their miscommunication, disorganisation and their individual personalities, causing them to be rarely coordinated, meaning their approach can be a little leftfield! In their heads they think their plans are completely ingenious and foolproof, not ever realising that the mission is usually solved by chance – or at least, a very fortunate turn of events. They never expect their plans to be disastrous – they want to be professional and brilliant! And they never learn anything from their previous missions.
Maggie
Maggie is energy, energy, energy and loves life on the wild side! She’s the rabbit caught in car headlights – with permanent sensory overload. She’s the one who normally always answers the phone when it rings, who listens, types and loses her focus all at the same time. She’s an all-round action hero who can’t keep still and who never really has a plan ‘We’ll figure it out on the waaaayyyyyyyyyyy……..’ (said as she has already disappeared out the door).
Because she acts first and thinks second, she can frustrate the rest of the troop – especially Flo, who loves a well-thought out plan. She isn’t necessarily forgetful, her attention span just isn’t long enough to catch the end of every sentence! Like all rabbits, she’s fast, agile and is the ultimate escape artist – she can dig her way out of anywhere. She’s hypervigilant and sees danger and conspiracy everywhere – often where there isn’t any. Her oversized ears can waggle in different directions and can bend round corners so she can listen in to conversations – however, if they get into a tangle, she can mishear things which can send missions slightly off course.
She’s enthusiastic and relentlessly optimistic about the outcome of any situation – no matter how bad it seems. With her supersonic hearing, Maggie is the ears of the troop, and also their fast legs. She is a high-wired, 15-year-old teen – and if the Troop were a pop group, Maggie would be Mel C from the Spice Girls.
Flo
Flo is an eccentric chicken, the leader of the troop and the voice of authority (or sanity) above all of the madness. She’s cautious, meticulous and a planner, with an eye for detail. She’s the troop’s mechanic, engineer and driver – and when there’s a problem to be solved, it’s Flo who leads the briefing. The oldest of the troop, Flo is both the wisest and the most cynical. But being a chicken, she’s also completely neurotic, with her mood swinging from calm to anxious in a beat. When she gets uptight, she clucks words in her sentences. She is the only one who can communicate with Jo d’Oeuf (even though she has no idea if he’s her egg or not).
She’s very curious which often triggers her OCD (Obsessive Chicken Disorder), and she can get fixated on something and be difficult to shift. Being an older chicken, she also has a tendency to fall into a deep sleep in the blink of an eye – which she calls a ‘power nap’. Her signature eyepatch makes her look like a great adventurer, and she claims it comes from an unfortunate pecking incident in a previous life on a battery farm. The truth is that it’s an affectation, and not really necessary. In fact, if you pay attention, it has a tendency to switch sides from one eye to the other, and when she REALLY needs to see, she flips it up in frustration.
Being the oldest (and the longest at the farm), the taste of free range freedom is the most sweet for her – she has little interest in going back to a life of just pecking around laying eggs, day in, day out (no offence, Jo d’Oeuf…). Flo represents the brains of the troop and their nimble fingers. She probably would have put together a more capable troop than this one but she had a very limited pool of resources… and this is as good as she was ever going to get.
John d’Oeuf
Jo d’Oeuf (as in ‘John the egg’) is an unhatched egg and the Coop’s navigator, chirping instructions from the look-out point at the top of the Coop. He’s a master of disguise and by adding a silly hat or fake moustache, Jo can blend in seamlessly. When unmasked, everyone is always somehow shocked that it was Jo underneath the whole time (although his disguises are rather simple and would not fool anybody in the real world).
Calm and confident, he’s a shell of few words – in fact, none at all – Jo d’Oeuf speaks in a range of chirps, beeps, whistles, and sometimes even pings and pongs from 1970s-era video games, which echo from inside his shell. Now that he’s a free-range egg, Jaune loves to go walkabout which sometimes comes in useful for picking up interesting snippets of information for the troop. With his smart polished brogues, he sometimes breaks into an Irish jig, which doubles as morse code. He is of course, very fragile and is always getting into situations where he only JUST manages not to crack up. Nonetheless, he is brave and reckless, with no conscience of his great fragility.
Jo is a complete enigma – no one knows where he comes from, what creature is inside that shell, when he will hatch or if he is even related to Flo. He’s always in her ear giving her the low down on what is going on – she’s the only one that can understand him. The eyes of the troop, Jo d’Oeuf is a little bit Groot, a little bit Buster Keaton. The farm is far too small for his massive ambitions – his mind is constantly playing the Mission Impossible theme!
Clive
Pig, artist, fashion icon, and all-round fabulous renaissance swine, Clive is a bon vivant and sophisticate who enjoys the finer things in life. Clive is very theatrical and see’s the world as a stage. Equally at home between a Broadway musical and a Shakespearean soliloquy, he has a line or a song for every situation. Give him a craft project or ask him to upcycle an item from the farm and he’s as happy as a pig in… well, as happy as a pig in a high thread count Egyptian cotton shirt. More of a lover than a fighter, Clive is kind, sensitive and empathetic to all the animals who find themselves with a problem. He may be one of the… er, larger members of the Troop, but he’s very light on his feet due to his morning t’ai chi routine. He will never be the first to volunteer to get his hooves (or his shirt) dirty but Clive will always step up when his natural strength is needed to push, pull or lift to help a pet in need.
Clive is the delicate nose and the muscle of the Troop. He is also the troop’s Head of Positivity, ready to burst into song anytime, often at the most inappropriate moment. Being quite particular, he can often wander off or hold the Troop back as he adds the finishing touches to his latest project. At the same time, you can count on him to stay cool in emergencies—he’s not the type to get into a tizzy. A sensitive soul, Clive sees the beauty in everyone and everything around him. He always knows when to place a hoof around the shoulder of one of the Troop.
Billy
Billy is a lamb and the youngest in the troop, no older than 10. Friendly, excitable but insecure and apt to change suddenly, he is super eager but often makes mistakes. The child of the ‘family’, he’s enthusiastic but sometimes hesitates to follow through with action. He loves the idea of adventure but panics (and bleats) when he’s in the middle of it. He has a copycat element to try and show he can do everything. Being a young sheep, he’s easily led but sometimes literally follows like a lamb to the… wrong place!
Billy really wants a life of adventure but he is still quite timid and naive – a bit like Dougal from Father Ted. Like all young kids, Billy is incapable of lying and can’t help but tell the truth – he just can’t keep a secret or be trusted with a coverup. Billy is mostly given junior tasks because he’s young – such as being the lookout while the others go in to tackle the problem. However, like all sheep, shadows freak him out, so he always moves out of dark areas into light (not helpful when hiding from the farmer) and he always moves uphill when scared – but is also afraid of heights.
Billy’s woolly coat can be quite useful in making ropes to support Clive in Mission Impossible-style scenes. But despite his warm coat, Billy is always freezing cold – his mum even knitted him a nice jumper. Billy doesn’t have the keenly developed senses the others possess. And yet he has the instinctive intelligence of a child, seeing the world in a less complicated way. At times, he shyly notices things that the others don’t, and asks the right questions that the others don’t think to ask. In some ways, he is the most reasonable member of the Troop – but the others don’t recognise this trait and tend to overlook him. They think of him as an apprentice and mollycoddle him because they believe he isn’t as capable as the rest of them.
While Billy’s not quite cut out for adventure he’ll always do his best for his friends and others who need it – his cute and sweet nature always seems to win everyone over.
