Yes I am serious; I have a “how the chicken crossed the road” story.
One beautiful summer afternoon when I was working at my shop, I heard this strange cry coming from the barnyard. It was definitely a screech of distress with a moaning quality to it. I looked towards the chicken run and I realized that a chicken had stuck its head through the chicken wire and our dog had grabbed it by the head and pulled it right out. We had lost a chicken or two and all I had found were the remains of some feathers scattered around the yard. Well, at least that mystery was solved! I started towards the chicken run and yelled at the dog. Realizing that he was in trouble, the dog dropped the chicken, and headed off to parts unknown. By this time, the chicken saw me coming and took a flapping flying leap into the pigpen which is right next to the chicken run. Well that was a serious mistake as pigs will and can eat anything at any time. A pig grabbed the chicken and I heard this strange cry all over again amplified about three times. Of course when I come to the pen the pigs know I’m usually bringing them something to eat which is better than any chicken. The aforementioned pig dropped the chicken and came rushing over with his buddies to the edge of the pen not wanting to miss out on any goodies I might have for them.
The chicken made the most of his opportunity and lifted off, all the while losing feathers and blood as it flew as hard as it could towards the shop and the driveway from where I had just come. I could see that it was badly injured as it came to a crashing landing against a tree trunk. Now I was running back towards the shop and on my way I made a detour and grabbed a hammer to put this poor bird out of its misery. I walked over to where the chicken was lying panting and bleeding against the tree trunk. I reached down to grab it when suddenly it took off running towards the highway. Running would not properly describe how this bird was hightailing it away from me. It had lost part of one of its legs and a piece of a wing and was kind of limping and flying and hopping along. There’s a set of railway tracks between us and the highway and the chicken stumbled over the rails and up on tothe highway without a pause. Number six highway is quite busy and just as thechicken got out on the road a semi was coming from the southeast and a bus from the northwest. Now picture this, these two vehicles were passing each other right in front of me and my chicken was in the middle of it. I kept going as I expectedthat I would be picking up the remains off the highway. When I got to the edge of the highway I didn’t see any sign of the chicken, until I looked up and there it was traveling at as high a speed as possible with its gimpy leg out into my neighbour’s field.
I realized that this was the end for that poor chicken. There was no doubt in my mind that a fox or a hawk would soon have a chicken dinner. I walked back to the yard and told Dorothy what just happened. No, this is not the end of the story as a week later my neighbour phoned us and said there’s a chicken in her yard. Dorothy and I went over there and sure enough it was old Gimpy. My neighbour lives on the same side of the highway as we do and obviously the chicken hadmanaged to cross the highway a second time without getting run over. I was ableto catch it this time, bring it home and now we had to decide what we were going to do. Chickens being the closest relatives to Tyrannosaurs Rex are not kind to one another and this chicken would have definitely been killed if we had put it back in the run. So we put it in the nursery and I cared for it the rest of its life until it met its destiny like the rest of them. It tasted quite good and was just missing part of one drumstick!
