Tonight my little brother, the chicken-keeper, is off camping so I was left in charge of putting my parents' herd of chickens in the coop for the night. "So how do I get them in, Joseph?" "Oh, they go in by themselves and you just have to close the door," he answered casually. Hmmm. Sounds suspiciously easy.
A few minutes ago I walked up to their fenced-in enclosure and let myself in. One chicken sauntered over to the gate I had opened and positioned herself there in the corner, her beady eyes following me as I ventured deeper into their domain. I hiked up my pajama pants and gingerly tiptoed around the plops of chicken poop. Shouldn't have worn flip-flops. I looked up to find 16 chickens watching me. "Shoo-shoo!" I pathetically flapped at them. A small contingent of younger chickens ran off. Weren't they all supposed to be cozily lined up in their coop? I gazed around and saw the group of younger chickens peering out at me from the shadows beneath the pine tree. Earlier they had probably huddled together in the coop, talking in their secret chicken language about their planned ambush. "The Weak One is left alone to care for us. We will count coup tonight!"
A branch broke and I whirled around. Were they closing in behind me? The chickens all scattered a pace or two and pretended to look at various small objects. I moved back towards the gate. The flock nonchalantly followed me, pausing to sharpen their talons on large rocks laying about. One particularly devious-looking chicken sidled closer to my leg. She seemed to be eyeing the two inches of skin exposed by my hitched-up scrubs. I could see a hungry gleam in her beastly eyes. Flesh! It was time to get the cuss out of there.
1 comments:
Oh Percy! I too will never feel the same about chickens because of him.
Post a Comment