Greetings from Chicken Little

By James L. Davis

One of our chickens has learned how to moonwalk.  She moonwalks in front of the chicken coop every morning to taunt the other chickens.  I've been meaning to talk to her about teasing the other chickens, but I haven’t because the other chickens deserve it.

Her name is Chicken Little.  We named her Chicken Little a while back after she recovered from a little conflict she had with the rest of the chickens in the coop.  It seems that the rest of the hens in the hen house were under the mistaken belief that Chicken Little’s name was really Chicken Dinner.

We inherited Chicken Little from my dad, who had  raised chickens for a number of years until he one day realized that he would not, could not, under any circumstance eat one of his chickens (or anyone else’s chickens for that matter, he doesn't like chicken) and that he did not like the thought of fresh eggs.  He prefers to think that eggs come from an egg carton and are produced in a factory somewhere in China.  I have always preferred to think of eggs the same way.  But, having realized that he had no real use for chickens or their eggs, he gathered them all up and brought them to our house to put in with our chickens.

I did not realize until that time that chickens had a highly developed social class and by introducing new hens into our hen house we initially started a war based on deep rooted ideological differences, much like the Democrats and the Republicans.  A war broke out for a few days among the hens and our rooster essentially played the part of the United States.  He ran around and flapped his wings and tried to get them to stop fighting each other and they ignored him completely.

After a couple of days the hens finally decided to put aside their differences and work as a unified hen house.  And what they decided to work together on was the death of Chicken Little.  For one reason or another when the hens decided to stop fighting each other they decided to take up beaks in the destruction of Chicken Little.  It could be because she was ill in some way, as my wife theorized.  Our kids thought that she was perhaps the ringleader in the previous conflict.  I suppose there is no real way of ever knowing, but I choose to believe that the other hens began to suspect that Chicken Little could moonwalk and because of that they were going to kill her.

So when I went out to feed the chickens one morning I found Chicken Little outside the hen house, her neck a bloody and tattered mess.  The other hens had just about severed her neck and when I picked her up and took her outside the chicken coop I figured that this was one dead chicken.

But when I went to get a shovel to finish the job the hens had started Chicken Little jumped up and ran away, which told me right away that Chicken Little may be a lot of things, but she was not stupid.  So I decided to leave her outside the coop to see if she made it through the night. She did make it through the night and has been an outcast of the hen house ever since.

Chicken Little now has her own hen house outside the chicken coop.  She believes it to be a hen house anyway, although in reality it is an old doghouse.  Every morning this chicken watches for one of us to make our way toward the field and she runs toward us, wings flapping and clucking as she greets us and follows us back out to take care of our animal chores.  This kind of behavior is how she came by her name.

The other animals on our little farm don’t seem to mind Chicken Little running about flapping her wings or moon walking.  Of course that just might be because she hasn't gotten really annoying.  I’m fairly confident that if she suddenly begins to breakdance there is going to be trouble with the goats.

The cats don’t seem to mind her too much.  They apparently are of the same opinion about chicken dinners as my dad, so they don’t waste a whole lot of time worrying over her.  I also believe they much prefer having a chicken in the doghouse to a dog in the doghouse.  That could change if the chicken starts to bark and with this chicken I’m not ruling anything out.

Today there are two more hens that have joined her as part of what I call the Outcast Hens.  Chicken Little has been attempting to teach them how to moonwalk, but they haven’t got the hang of it yet.

So while we take care of the animal chores every morning Chicken Little struts in front of the chicken coop, taunting her would-be killers with the fact that the Outcast Hens have no chicken wire to fence them in.  Of course, they have no chicken wire to fence predators out either.

I haven’t told Chicken Little that little fact, however.  It might throw off her moon walking.