The Prairie Spy

I remember a time when the Post Office delivered a box the size of a six-pack of beer that had 16 baby chicks inside, each one of them as happy as if they had a brain, cheeping and peeping merrily inside a world that barely measured six inches to a side.

Then—two months later– they were outside, giddily running around the yard chasing butterflies and bugs. Well, 15 of them were. Mr. Hawk got one, which probably wasn’t the last one, either. The chickens played it pretty safe most of the day, hanging around the house, gathering beneath the forsythia bush or some giant lilies for concealment and protection. But then in the evening, they seemed to lose their wits completely and fanned out across the yard, all a-flutter like teen-agers, kind of.

“All a-flutter.” There’s the first word that made it into our general English vocabulary that might be attributed to chickens. After watching them, I’ was all a-flutter with lots of words that chickens are responsible for.

As they scatter across the yard, like chickens with their head cut off, completely vulnerable to another hawk attack, one would have to label them all “dumb clucks.” Most of us at some time have also fallen into the dumb cluck category, I’m sure. From the time I got my driver’s license, the term “dumb cluck” could have described me to a tee.

In some ways, I as a teenager drove like a chicken with its head cut off. If you haven’t personally butchered a chicken, which requires removing their head, you really cannot grasp the far edges of this phrase, neither for its graphic nature, nor for its frantic physical movements. Use your imagination. You’ll have to, if you haven’t butchered a chicken.  I don’t drive like that anymore. At some point, I realized that the sky really could be falling. On me. On me and my car.

I remember standing on the edge of a limestone quarry in Iowa while growing up. I believed that no one had yet jumped off this ledge which was more or less fifteen feet up from the water, which was at least 60 feet deep. “Jump, Chicken!” Someone shouted. Uh, uh, I thought to myself. I really really didn’t want to.

I could have jumped. The dumb-cluck driving I did not too much later at the age of 16  would have made anything else I might have done when I was younger look much safer. “Chicken.”  As for where does the pejorative “chicken” come from?  I’ve watched fifteen of them run from a watermelon rind! Or a gust of wind. Or a door slam—which it does many times a day. Or a hawk! Sometimes being chicken doesn’t only mean you’re a chicken.

Probably the greatest phrase to come from the world of poultry is the phrase “hen-pecked.” I’m not certain how it became solely aimed at relationships involving men and women, but for sure it did. (Full disclosure: I myself am completely unfamiliar with the phrase’s application to me; my only information regarding it involves other men.)  None of my friends are hen-pecked either, let me assure you. We—all of us—go fishing or snowmobiling or deer hunting anytime we want to. But you others? You’re hen-pecked, for sure.

Which brings us to the last observation of chickens: “Pecking order.” None of us escape this term, because no matter what your situation, there is someone who is the boss—unless you’re that lucky person who has never worked. I suppose there may be someone out there who has no pecking order above them; I just don’t know who.

Besides me, that is.

Watching chickens has reminded me that it’s a lot like watching people. It’s like watching the terms above be applied in real non-chicken life.

Henny-penny, whose real name is Chicken Little: “The sky is falling.”

Well, sometimes, maybe.