Drunken Chickens

The chickens were drunk again, and there was no stopping their boastful strutting or their loud and raucous calls. As they stumbled about leaning on each other and occasionally falling and ending up with a beak full of dust they sang the song of the Olde Country “BaaaK..bukbukbuk…ba..ba.BaaaaK” it went on, “Buh..ba..bu buh bah,bah, bah Baaaak”

The other animals cringed and retreated further into their homes. The pigs were the only ones to remain outside and that was probably only due to pure laziness.
If anytime were a bad time for a henhouse crisis, surely this was it. But somehow that didn’t keep there from being one.

Having gnawed through three layers of wood, two layers of cardboard and a thick plastic cable Morty, the rat with an insatiable appetite for non-food items, was now getting down to business on a few wires at the back of the barn when his entire body suddenly went rigid. Morty’s eyes, although usually beady and active, grew to twice their normal size and fixed permanently wide-open and bulging. Morty’s matted and dirty brown fur raised up from his body, repelling dirt and gleaming slightly as he and the hay around him burst into a smoky burning lump with a tail. At least that’s the way the sheep told it some time later, but they are known to exaggerate. The remaining black lump (with a tail) however would tend to corroborate.

When the fire reached the three-storied hen house the first few chickens out stumbled and fell. The pile up of chickens that followed would have made a KFC bucket of chicken look like a child-size appetizer and by the time the last few chickens escaping the hen house forced their way out there was the sad and mournful smell of a rich, smoky mouth-watering aroma filling the air. Had the person who wrote the expression “a chicken with their head cut off” been there that night and seen the chaos spread by thirteen flaming chickens running amuck that classic cliché might have turned out entirely differently.