a game of chicken
I was about ten, visiting a friend of my mother's on a farm, and was told to play outside. Oh, and don't go in the chicken cage, that rooster gets annoyed.

Oh, really? A chicken is going to keep me out? I sauntered over to the cage and gave it a once-over. Only a little hen was in sight, though I couldn't see inside the coop. Maybe he's asleep? Should be safe enough.

I opened the gate, ducked and entered. The hen tried to escape, but I closed the gate in time. I stuck my head in the coop, but it was too dark to see anything. I turned to leave, but heard a rustling from the coop, and this enormous rooster squeezed his bulk through the doorway.

He was enormous: the Ahnold of roosters. Had I been older I've have felt a bit sorry for any hen he mounted, but at the time I remember wondering: how will they get him in the oven? I'd seen smaller turkeys. Maybe it was partly feathers, because he did not look happy to see me.

I backed away towards the gate, and he kept coming. When I reached for the gate, he leapt up in a whirlwind of feathers, and dug a spur claw in to my upper arm, before jumping off on to the top of the coop. Blood everywhere. Good thing I'd had a Tetanus shot not long before.

OK: point taken, Mister Rooster. I still have the scar, from the time I got pwned by a chicken.
( bnt what, me worry?, Fri 25 Apr 2008, 17:07, Reply)