Fowl Play

I blame Anthony Spirito for the chicken problem in my life. 

Yes, I do notice that projection of blame is a habit with me, but this one is for real.  Anthony has cursed my life with the haunting of chickens.

There is a perfectly good explanation of proof, too.  For those of you who don't know, Anthony is my dear friend from college.  After graduation, while working at King World Productions, Anthony started bringing up chicken.  Not in any appropriate context, it just popped up every moment he opened his mouth.  It was completely annoying.  "Hi Anthony, what's going on?" "Chicken".  Silence from all.  What the heck was he talking about? 

After months of simply ignoring his chicken responses, I finally confronted him with the sheer idiocy of the meaningless word.  That's when I discovered that a woman he worked with was obsessed with chicken, talked about eating chicken all the time, and she had evidently infected Anthony with the chicken disease.  It popped out of his mouth at every opportunity to speak.  It confused, embarassed, and humiliated people.  But I thought it was funny.  So funny that to this day I associate anything chicken related to Anthony, much to his annoyance.  Obviously he finally got so annoyed that he visited the Vaudun VooDoo Gods and obtained a Mary doll with chicken feet.  And now the chickens are attacking ME.

Of course, I am not foolish enough to actually enter a pen of chickens and allow them to peck me to death.  But they are stalking me, every minute of every day.  My neighbor has lots of chickens, I thought they were really cute with all their clucking and squawking and strutting around the neighbor's yard.  Until one night, alone, no husband, no children, I went to let my dog Wags in the house.  Thankfully, my danger radar was working, and I bent down to look at Wags when I started to open the door, and discovered a GIANT chicken foot sticking out of my dogs mouth!  A WARNING!  The chickens were coming.  And they were DEAD!  But they would never stop, proof being that no matter how much I screamed like a banshee, Wags would not put down the clawed foot horridly sticking out of her mouth. 

After about an hour of my screaming (gee, thank you neighbors who never called the police), Wags finally, tenderly deposited the foot on the deck and waited for me to let her enter the house.  It's about 2am by now.  So, I open the door, vowing to avoid her mouth at all costs, and she daringly scoops up the chicken foot and tries to come in the door.  Alas!  I had already slammed it shut in her face, so she smacked into the glass with the chicken foot spreading disease on my sliding door!  EWWWW.

So, another 15 minutes or so of Wags waiting patiently and me screaming hoarsely now, (not a neighbor in site), and Wags finally gave in and dropped the foot.  I cracked the door and, still screaming at her, allowed her to enter.  Then, I had to deal with the dead foot outside my door.  I grabbed a dustpan and, screaming nonstop, made a few attempts to flick the foot over the railing.  I do not like dead things, especially partial dead things.  Finally, I succeeded in flicking it over the railing and into a bush.  The next day, John went to find it, and it was gone.  He thinks I made the whole thing up. 

Of course, since that time, my dogs have had many chicken dinners in our backyard.  The chickens are not very bright, and they continue to fly over the fence and become the main course.  I have found a foot in my dogs' mouths on numerous occasions, most recently during Girl Scout cookie season while a leader's small child played with Luke while I gave her mom cookies.  I called Luke over to see what they were playing with, and, of course, it was a chicken foot, leg and thigh recently ripped off a neighbor chicken.  I do not think we make very nice neighbors these days. 

The greatest danger is that we now have a dog door, and the dogs are free to enter the house when I am not looking.  I anxiously await the day when I find a dog on my bed with a dead chicken spread out all over it.  I know it's coming.  Each time I leave my house, I enter with the fear that some chicken part is lurking behind every corner.

I fully expect the chickens to learn dog language one of these days, and then they will sneak in the entire herd of chickens while I am sleeping one night.  Then the dead, headless, featherless chickens will come to life, and drag me down the entrance to Hell and I will exist amongst rotting chicken parts for all of eternity.

Ok, how weird is this, Dora the Explorer is on and they are doing the chicken dance, and my son is doing it too!!!  Oh my God the chickens are taking over the entire world!!!

Anthony, please, please burn the chicken Mary voodoo doll, the meat must be cooked!  I can't take it any more!!!