Iced Chicken

Two days worth of a fair-sized batch of freezing rain and mist hit the area and, as always, it completely screwed up all the Southerners (e.g., everyone). Seems that people in this area are unaccustomed to dealing with anything slicker than the occasional spring rain, and as a result, have spent the entire weekend finding new and funnier ways to run over and maim each other on the local Interstates.

The news crews are having quite a holiday of it, putting their junior reporters out on the road to cover the event so that they can do live broadcasts, the better to convince us they are On The Scene of Breaking News.

This, of course, generally involves a 20-something news bimbo dressed to the teeth in winter crap accompanied by her news van and camera crew interviewing a tow-truck operator on the side of the road about how many dumbasses they've had to wedge out of thier "driving on a skating rink" difficulties. (Note that it may also involve the News Station's token negro, should the road be located in a Depressed Neighborhood, although these are generally reserved for On The Scene Reporting of gang shootings and people being OH-pressed by The Man.)

The tow guy, who is paid by the number of tows he does, is perfectly willing to go along with this disruption to his normal routine, because he KNOWS what's going to happen. Every time they go "live" to the bimbo, some dipwad running about 65MPH suddenly loses control on the VERY BRIDGE WHERE SHE'S DOING THE INTERVIEW, resulting in a damned fine live shot of said dipwad bouncing his SUV off of the bridgerail 14 times and smacking into the LAST dipwad, whose SUV is DOA after hitting the Lincoln, which had slowed to a crawl to rubberneck at the news bimbo setting up her live shot.

Now, let's consider for a moment: High speed traffic, already driving to the very edge of their capabilities, hitting black ice on a bridge. With extreme concentration and no surprises, they can almost pull it off...scary, but they're just gonna make it by the skin of their teeth....Holy Crap! Lights! Action! Is that Heather Titmonkey and the Channel 5 Newsteam over there? WTF is SHE doing out here...BAM! BAM! BAM! SCRUNCH! BAM! CRUNCH! PHSSSSSHHHH!

Well fuck.

Thanks a pantload, Heather.

The tow guy is one happy redneck, as he knows as long as the news bimbo is there, there's gonna be anough business to send his li'l tow-sprogs to Yale, and it's a LOT more legal than setting up 4-way green lights or actually running potential customers off the road himself.

So, anyhow, I'm watching some guy with a tire iron trying to get to Heather to explain that perhaps she should drive the half-mile back to the studio and set up her shot there, when it occurred to me that The Kid would be attempting to bring my Granddaughter over for a visit. Now, the Granddaughter is the light of my life, and much as I wanted to see her, it didn't strike me as all that good an idea to maybe get someone hurt or killed over it, so I called The Kid to tell him to stay home and give the visit a miss.

"Yeah," he said, "I figured that out when the chickens fell down."

This cryptic little bit of weirdness makes more sense when you realize that The Kid lives in a VERY rural setting...so rural in fact, that free-ranging chickens are likely to be found anywhere on the property. In the present case, three of the brain-damaged things decided to huddle up in a clay planter on The Kid's front porch when the temp began to drop a bit. Now, keep in mind, these are Texas chickens, which is to say that they are unaccustomed to temps below about 50, so when it got clear down to 29, it was a major disaster in the chicken universe.

The chickens, having roughly the same brain capacity as your average news bimbo, therefore made the decision to stay on the front porch in a chicken clot instead of just going home. As you may know, you don't often hear the words "rocket scientist" and "chicken" in the same sentence. (On the other hand, they apparently stayed toasty warm and survived, so perhaps Mother Nature, in her wisdom, is again ensuring that the natural order continues to provide me eggs and fried chicken.)

At any rate, The Kid wouldn't have noticed them at all if they hadn't started out the day squawking and cackling like the coyotes were after them, and right at his front door, too. He looked out and discovered what the problem was:

The chickens wanted to go eat, or take a dump, or shave, or whatever it is that chickens do first thing in the morning. In order to do this, they necessarily have to get out of the planter. No problem. Just jump down about nine inches, right? Well, yeah, as long as the surface you're jumping to (a concrete porch area) isn't covered with a sheet of ice. Since this one WAS, it resulted in the brave "first out" chicken hitting the porch, desperately clawing for purchase, and then tipping over and fluttering, flapping, and chicken-yelling in a panic until it could get rightside up enough to flutter back up into the planter. After which the NEXT one would try it.

The Kid says it's a rule of thumb of his that if chickens tip over, he won't drive. (This also apparently has some applicability in the ingestion of intoxicants, but I did not inquire further.)

I told him to get me some pix, as I'd never heard of chickens losing traction, and he said he'd try. He later got ahold of me, and said that two out of three of them had gotten off the porch and would not return for any inducement, and the third was staying in the planter and being rather sullen. In short, no pix. Ah, well. Maybe next time.

In Our Next Episode: How To Rescue Distressed Chickens With A Few Simple Tools, A Frying Pan And Some Tasty Batter (Heads up PETA! This one's for you!)