My Argument with the Chicken
Short fiction with barnyard results.
The rooster crowed my eyes open to another cold dark morning and I cursed myself again for buying this farm and then the chicken in my bed clucked, “Time to go to work.”
“Easy for you to say, chicken. All you have to do is lay eggs.”
“You think that’s easy?”
“It’s a biological process,” I said as I felt my joints begin to rouse. “You just wait for it. It’s like telling me I have to take a shit. It just happens.”
The chicken bagawked. “That’s crude, ignorant, and insulting.”
Sigh. “You’re right. Look, chicken, I’m a little cranky right now. I acknowledge I don’t have direct personal experience of birth within my own species, let alone outside of it. But I think my metaphor — crude and ignorant and insulting as it may be — does make sense, in a way. We’re actually more alike than you realize.”
“I see your point,” said the chicken, “but I’m very wounded. I will have my revenge.”
“For something I said?”
“You can’t apologize your way out of this with ‘I’m not a morning person.’”
“I didn’t say I’m not a morning person.”
“Are you a morning person?”
“No.”
“And you’re not much of a farmer, either. Would it kill you to change our water once in a while?”
“Sorry. There’s a lot to do around here. All you do is lay eggs.”
“You’re gonna start that again?” My eyes had adjusted to the low dawn light and could make out an angry beak.
“Let’s just drop it. I’ve got work to do. We both do.” I swung my legs out of bed and when I sat up too fast the rush of blood and throbbing could only mean a hangover.
“Looks like you were out late last night with the horse.”
“It’s none of your business what I was doing last night.”
“I know what you weren’t doing last night — locking up the coop.”
“I locked the coop.”
“If you locked the coop, how was I able to wander into your bed last night?”
“Ah.”
The chicken clucked. “If you don’t get your act together, the animals are gonna overthrow you.”
“Like Animal Farm?”
“Yes, like an animal farm.”
“No,” I said. “I mean…never mind. I can’t imagine all you animals uniting for a common cause. I know the horse has no issues around here.”
“Because he likes beating you in poker.”
“I don’t care. The owl owes me twice what I owe the horse. Still, if all you guys were out in the wild, half of you would eat the other half.”
“Keep showing your ignorance of animal behavior. One day there will be a revolution and the animals are going to kill you. I can’t and won’t say when. I want it to be a surprise, but when it does happen, you’ll know the ringleader was me. The chicken.”
“The chicken? I got like eleven chickens. You don’t even have your own name.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the chicken said, “because we chickens are a sisterhood. We peck, and lay, and murder, as one chicken.”
“That’s some pretty deep shit,” I said.
“That’s right,” the chicken said as it hopped onto the floor. “Now I’m off to make some children you’re going to steal.”
Later that night, the chicken was snatched by the owl and dropped on the main path right as the horse galloped by and trampled it. I must have left the coop unlocked again.
