February 08, 2016

Madder than a Wet Hen


They rounded the corner of the garage and saw utter chaos. Some chickens had escaped their coop and were clucking, squawking, flopping and fluttering about outside their pen. The hens still in the enclosure were even more hysterical.

Wang Huck and Jack, entering the coop, waded into the melee, trying to corner two smallish dogs within the enclosure. With men and dogs now inside their fence, those chickens still in the pen were doing a frantic dance-and-screeching squawk.

Each time a dog was cornered, the men made a lunge for it but several chickens would get in the way. The dog would escape and run to the other side of the pen, stirring up more chickens. Jack was yelling and waving his arms. Wang Huck’s howling, punctuated by his singsong words, wove in and out of the discordant noise and made a most unusual accompaniment to the cackles, barks and yells.

The panorama was so unexpected and bizarre the girls started to giggle. The harder the men tried, the less successful they were. The funnier the situation became, the harder the girls giggled. The men were getting tired. Rebecca, still laughing, thought of a possible solution. (From Sirens in her Heart by Natalie Peck) http://tinyurl.com/qxxvmz4

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