There are many times in life when you have to fight to be a man, today was not one of those days. As I was minding my own business, thinking about enjoying the warm weather and getting some work done. I was interrupted by the gentle clucking of chickens outside. The place where I am fortunate enough to work has their own chickens, that they do get their own eggs from, and so they serve a purpose. I have seen them almost daily, and my interactions with them have until today been of the most perfunctory in nature.
So this takes us to today, I hear the chickens clucking away outside, and I decided that I should go out and talk to them and see what all the clucking was about. I mean there must
have been something happening. So I approached the herd of chickens like I always did, with a friendly disposition and the intent of just saying, “Hello chickens, what is happening on this beautiful November day?”
The conversation started much as I thought it would, I milled about with the chickens and made my own fake clucking sound, thinking this would ingratiate me with the rest of the flock. Seeing no animosity, I took that as encouragement and started to duck my head and
mimic the motions the fowl were making. This turned out to be a bad idea. As one of the roosters took this action to be a threat I think.
Out of nowhere he pecked at my shoe. Which more startled me than scared me. This chicken was really mad at my shoe apparently as he continued to attack. I tried to reason with the chicken and calmly explained that I didn’t mean any harm and if he went away I might bring him some food. He didn’t buy it so I of course went into my natural defense mode, which is reminiscent of the crane technique from the movie the Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi said when you do this right, there is no defense. He obviously had never tussled with an angry chicken before.
I hoped he would get bored and stop his attack before I had to get serious and move to the second part of my self defense training. (The fetal position) Fortunately I was able to stay
calm and stop laughing long enough to think of an acceptable exit strategy.
The irony was heavy on my mind that I was running away from an overly combatant chicken: Who was the chicken? I did learn that if a chicken does start to attack you, if you run away, they will not be able to follow you very far and they will immediately attack your friend who was taking pictures of that whole incident. So it all worked out in the end I got away with out being harmed by a chicken or doing harm to a chicken. I also haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.
Basic Equipment for Chcikens
Monday Madness: Curiosity killed the chicken?
How chickens can change a life