Friday January 15th, 2016

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose that have something to do with: chickens.

I drove out to Cawston this morning (about half an hour west of here) to pick up three frozen chickens and two dozen eggs from a farmer we know at the Penticton farmers market. It's a beautiful drive in the winter, one that I can appreciate when the roads are clear like they were today.

I'll have to go again before the snow is totally gone, and actually bring my camera with me to capture some of the views.

Mine:

"The chickens are loose again," Henry called from the kitchen.

"Which way they headed?" Martha shouted back from the living room, her hands continuing to work at her latest knitting project.

"Looks like the elementary school again," Henry said as he turned his attention back to the newspaper.

"That ought to save us a couple feedings," Martha said after a quick glance at their grandfather clock confirmed that it was time for recess.

4 comments:

Greg said...

Were the chickens actual killed-and-then-preserving-through-freezing chickens, or were they just very cold chickens that have been standing around in the snow waiting for you to turn up? (I'm not entirely sure I know which answer the chickens would prefer, either!)
Hmm, Henry and Martha seem to be doing some interesting farming there... I shall look forward to seeing what else they might be raising!

Chickens
People remarked, as people are want to do, when the Foxes arrived in the cul-de-sac and moved in next door to the Chickens. There was a small amount of not-really-amused-laughter, and a few not-funny-at-all-jokes made, and then no-one really thought all that much of it. Until one day someone noticed that the Foxes seemed to be using both houses as though they were their own, and there was no sight of any Chickens from dawn to dusk, or dusk to dawn. Then the Turkeys, the Gooses, the Partridges and the Guinea-Fowles started to worry a little more about their neighbours.

Kyle said...

Mary couldn't believe what she was seeing: Cory, her youngest, running in the front yard, bare-footed and cawing like a rooster.

Running toward him, one of their "dumb cluckers" (husband Frank's monicker for them) at full gallop.

She winced, expecting a tumble and bawling, but the chicken veered at the last second.

Cory beat a chicken at chicken.

Anonymous said...

They were all gathered neatly in the corner of the pen, right next to the trough where we put the food. Though there beady black eyes were shifting all around the pen, they continued to rest on Jim and me far too often for it to be random. They were cooking up a plan in those feathered heads of theirs.

And even though I had an inkling, the uprising the next day still took us all by surprise.

Marc said...

Greg - the first option, thanks very much.

Ah, those sly Foxes. There went the neighborhood, it would seem...

Kyle - hurray for Cory! Haha, that's a great image you've painted in my head.

Ivy - a chicken uprising sounds legitimately horrifying. I would not want to get in the way of it, that's for sure!