Tuesday December 23rd, 2008

The exercise:

Le startere: three french hens.

Mine:

Justin entered the tiny butcher shop in Toulouse and stopped in shock. This was not what he had been expecting at all.

"Bonjour monsieur!" The butcher was not the issue for Justin - he could have come straight out of a child's book. A rotund man with rosy cheeks, bushy mustache and an apron with a French phrase scrawled across it that Justin was fortunate enough to not understand.

No, his shock was the result of seeing the three, very much alive, hens sitting in a cage on the counter.

"Um, hello," he replied haltingly. "Um, do you -"

"Yes, yes," the butcher said with only the hint of a roll of the eyes. "What would you like?"

Justin paused; he was not considering his options, he knew what he had come in the shop for. Three chickens for his host family's Christmas Eve dinner. However he had not been counting on them still being alive.

"Three chickens please," Justin said slowly and hoped the man would produce three nicely package, plucked, very much dead, chickens. Instead he nodded gruffly, reached into the cage and grabbed a hen by the neck. Justin's eyes went wide as the butcher picked up a large cleaver with his free hand. "Ah, wait!"

"What is the problem?"

"Ah... um, I'll take them alive," he said in a rush. "We'll, ah, cut them up ourselves, thank you!"

The butcher frowned but put the hen back in the cage with her two sisters. Justin paid the money owed, grabbed the cage and flew out the door. Once outside he considered his options.

And that, my friends, is why there are three hens running loose in the woods surrounding Toulouse to this very day.