The Great Chickening; Chapter 1

Now that you've all done your homework, let me give you some more backstory.

At the beginning of the summer, I walked up to my local grocery store to find six-foot tall metal chickens available for sale. I thought, "Who the hell wants a six-foot tall metal chicken?" completely innocent of the epic journey ahead.

See, I have a small group of Mommy Friends that is sprawled over two continents. (If you've been around long enough to remember the time I was stranded in California, know that this is the same group of friends. Not that stranded me--that put up with me a few extra days while I meandered my way across the state before heading home.) Earlier this year, we read the chicken story from the Bloggess and found it hysterical. Sandy and Tracy were particularly enamored with the tale.


This summer, when our third annual meetup met at Sandy's house, Tracy and I had a conversation that went something like this:

You know what Sandy needs?
A six foot metal chicken?
Affirmative.

Since Sandy blogs about green living, simplicity and is perpetually encouraging us to declutter our houses and our lives, it is particularly amusing.

Over the long weekend (we like our weekends to begin on Wednesday night and end on Tuesday morning,) we kept disappearing on urgent side trips of a mysterious nature, but, alas, the North Dallas runs distinctly classier than West Texas, and no spray-painted rebar-and-oil-drum avian structure was to be found.

Never give up. A plan was hatched that, next time I found myself up hoity-toity way, I'd take her a chicken from West Redneck. Her Home Owner's Association needs that kind of pluck introduced.

After quite a bit of comparison shopping, I found this chicken for the bargain price of $99. For those of you gasping, know that identical chickens at other locations were double the price. How could I, a bargain shopper, turn down $100 of free chicken? At half price, it's an absolute steal.

INSERT PIC OF CHICK WITH GIRLS

(For the record, it did not cross the road.)

I go in and tell the cashier, "I want to buy one of the chickens outside."

"Really? You want to BUY one of those chickens?"
"Yes. But there's no sticker or sign. How do I get someone to ring it up? I'm not carrying it in."
"NO! Don't try that. Let me call someone." He calls, then curiosity gets the better of him, "What do you plan to DO with the chicken."
"Drive to Dallas, put it on my friend's porch, ring the doorbell and run."

I've never been on the receiving end of such a look of awe. Especially not from a cashier. He has a manager look it up so that he can ring it up. The chicken is all mine.

The only problem is that I now own a 6-foot-chicken and a five-foot wide minivan. Jeremy, from the pharmacy department, spent a good twenty minutes stuffing that bird in Penny only to discover that the sliding door could not be closed. Jeremy was full of helpful pointers like, "You know, with the money you're saving from buying this bargain-priced chicken, you could buy the other bird left in stock." I paused from my wing wrangling to tell him, "Why in the world would I want two chickens?"

Assuming I was not willing to drive 300+ miles with this added 'feature' we aborted the mission. I told him, "I need to get my son from therapy. I'll be back."

"Don't worry. We won't sell this to anyone else," he says, probably thinking he knows exactly why a son of mine would need therapy.

"I wasn't overly worried. Nobody wants this chicken."

After getting Charlie from OT and speech, I return for the bird. Jeremy is on his dinner break but his supervisor has a plan. Once back, Jeremy will load the chicken into his own truck and deliver it to my front porch. While on the clock.

"You must really want to sell this chicken." I comment, knowing it has been there for roughly 5 months.

"You have no idea."

And that is how it came to pass that, at 10:00 on a Thursday night, Jeremy AND his manager unload it on my porch, quite careful to secret into the shadows.

"It might get stolen," they theorize.

"Trust me. No one wants this chicken."