I feel the need to share what I have learned about chickens in the past few days.  You may not be aware of this, but for every chicken that you see, there are 100 invisible chickens that you can not see.  The interesting thing about invisible chickens is that they actually have VERY visible poop….I’m not sure how this works exactly, like why is their digestive tract invisible? If you can see the poop on the ground, why is it not floating around mid air inside the invisible chicken? It must have something to do with when it hits the oxygen?….Regardless it explains why chickens poop more than all the elephants and babies in the world combined….It also explains why most people do not keep chickens inside their house.

So I had some chickens in my house…In my finished carport. They are not mine. I was just chicken sitting…pretty poorly I might add.  My friend bought her boyfriend a chicken coop for his birthday, and I volunteered to watch the baby chicks until the big reveal at his Chicken Surprise Party!
The little chicks arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Little fluffy baby chicks so cute I just want to stuff em in my pockets, my voice raises ten octaves just talking to them, that’s how cute they are. Sick baby chickens on the other hand are like an alien blight, so disturbing to look at. The heebie jeebie factor of its feeble little sick chicken body face down in its own food, eyes glazed over with clear lids…they look demonic, possessed, and every time I go to check on it I let out a small unexpected scream.  We lose two baby chickens the first night.  I tell my boys the chicks are just sleeping…but secretly I think they have a toxic neurosystem disease that will spread to  all of us.  This goes back again to the Little House on the Prairie episode about tainted mutton, that altered my life.

Now there are two baby chicks..okay okay everything is gonna be just fine, 2 baby chickens make a fine birthday gift….and then the third one goes down. We discuss our options…making puppets out of the dead chickens wasn’t one of them. Coupons for live chickens, a bucket of KFC, a chicken balloon…there’s lots of ways to say Chicken Surprise…We decide on grown up chickens from an ad on Craigslist.

Now I’m not about to let my friend drive to the middle of nowhere to some “Farm” to meet some guy who claims to be selling chickens…especially not when the “Farm” is on “Cox Rd”…come on now, I’m going with!!  So we set out on Cox rd…which is very long and curvy.  Arriving at our destination I decide that the farm and garden area of craigslist is a more credible section then the parts I have been perusing.  These chickens were every bit as big and beautiful as described.

  We take off with two live chickens in the backseat and race back to my carport…stopping only for a bite to eat…I can’t tell you where…only that we were very very hungry, there weren’t a lot of options, the chickens were facing the other way….we ate quickly….those dyslexic cows are so convincing….it was wrong…sorry.

The great thing about my closed in carport is it has cement floors and nothing in it but a drum set, one surviving baby chick and a giant life size replica rhinoceros*. We set up the chickens and I prepare myself for a days worth of chicken destruction.  That was Before I knew that I had 202 chickens, in my house ( most of them invisible) In the morning..it’s Party day. I sneak in thrilled to see everyone has survived the night…and I suddenly wonder if this whole thing is a joke on me. Have people been secretly saving all of their feces to splatter around in my carport? Did the person that keeps stealing my hairbrush sneak in for a bowel cleansing? I can not stress enough how utterly unprepared I was for the amount of chicken shit that suddenly has presented itself before me. No judgement. Really…just awe.

So? You may ask..How did the party turn out? Let me walk you thru it. We had made feathered chicken masks for the guests, who were encouraged to dress like farmers. Instead of yelling surprise…We all CLUCKED happy birthday. We did this perfectly because, while the birthday boy was being wrangled…I held a rehearsal (OMG such a control freak, I know).

Casually mentioning that you want to be a cult leader is an excellent way to end a conversation. So I don’t bring it up much…. anymore. But it was during that brief moment, with 30 people standing in a driveway dressed as chicken farmers clucking in unison to my orchestration…I realized my true destiny.    I drew the conclusion that being a cult leader and helping to plan a really strange surprise party are basically the same thing.

*My replica rhinoceros plays no real role in this story, I just like to mention her whenever possible.