What a day! – two

Still raining torrentially, so in an attempt to get out of it I wandered into the nearest marquee.

‘Just somewhere dry’. I mumbled as I stumbled in through the door and was greeted by row after row of cages stacked six deep on top of each other.

What was in them? Ferrets? Mice? Rabbits? Monkeys? Was this the animal experimentation tent? I peered into the nearest cage.

‘Good job I don’t suffer from Alektorophobia’ I thought as I stared into the glassy red eye of the biggest chicken I’ve ever seen. It was massive, filling the cage to every available corner, the cage was full to bursting point. How on earth were they going to get it out through that tiny door – in pieces? Legs, thighs, breasts, and wings? More to the point – how did they get it in there in the first place?

Now I’ve heard that you can hypnotize a chicken by holding it tightly and drawing a line in the dirt over and over, when you let go of the chicken it will stay right there - but I wasn’t about to take on this monster. With a chicken this big I could begin to believe that birds really were descended from the dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex? Enough KFC for ten bargain buckets in a single bird. Did you know that in 1979 Colonel Sanders (that goatee bearded chappie in the white suit) was the second most recognized public figure in the world.

Who was the first? Elvis? Don’t know.

In medieval France one of the punishments for an adulterous wife was to make her chase a chicken through the town naked – I wonder what the others were)? Perhaps it was the real reason why the chicken crossed the road, and not to get to the other side after all. There’s a town in Colorado (aptly named Fruita) where the townspeople celebrate 'Mike the Headless Chicken Day'. It seems that a farmer named L.A. Olsen cut off Mike's head in September 1945 in anticipation of a chicken dinner (why???) - Mike went on to live for another 4 years WITHOUT A HEAD eventually dieing from choking on a corn kernel (no, I don’t believe it either).

Anyway, as I looked and thought about dinosaurs, 'Mike the Headless Chicken’, and French naked ladies I began to notice the chicken looking hard at me. Was it trying to stare me out? If it didn’t drop it soon I’d drop it down my chimney – that’s how it used to be done - Chimney's used to be cleaned by dropping live chickens down them.

No, honestly.

You see… chickens are much more interesting than you thought. They come in all shapes and sizes, and their eggs come in all sorts of colours, from white, to brown, to green, to pink, to blue…. I know, I saw some in the tent - in the egg show.

Yes, honestly.

Want to know more about chickens?

Chicken frenzy times folks, hang on to you hats, here come the facts…

A chicken heart beats 280-315 times a minute…A chickens' body temperature normally runs at 102-103 degrees F… A rooster takes 18-20 breaths a minute, a hen about double that at 30-35 beats a minute… There are over 150 varieties of domestic chicken… It takes a hen 24-26 hours to lay a single egg…A chicken can have 4 or 5 toes on each foot… Supermarket chickens are only 5-8 weeks old… A chicken takes 21 days to hatch… Chickens were domesticated about 8000 years ago… It takes 4 lbs of feed to make a dozen eggs… A hen lives an average of 5-7 years, but can live up to 20 years… Hens lay eggs their entire life, with production decreasing every year from year one… An egg starts growing into a chick when it reaches a temperature of 86 degrees F…

Enough?

Should I stop?

By the time I came out of the tent it had stopped raining.

I’ll tell you about my first prize tomorrow.