A Chicken Love Story

One of my favorite read-every-day blogs is written by Kathi D who often writes about all the chicken-y things going on at her place. This has inspired me to tell a story from my own past.

The grandkids love this story the best of all the family stories: the one about Grandpa Dave and his Chicken Girlfriend..... a Chicken Love Story (and I swear every word of it is true!)

About a thousand years ago, in the early 80's, when my kids were small and I still had a husband, we lived in the middle of a 200 acre avocado grove (not ours) and we had chickens. My (then) husband LOVED those chickens! He spent a lot of time up the hill near the chicken coop, hanging around observing those chickens. Now, even though we had a coop of sorts, these chickens had free run of the avocado grove most of the time.

One day husband came in the house and said to me," Come with me, you've got to see this to believe it!". As we got near the chicken coop, one of the hens came running over to husband and turned around and squatted in front of him, doing the typical chicken mating dance! (if you've ever had hens AND a rooster you know what I'm talking about!) Every time he walked away, she would chase him, run in front of him and squat down again. She'd been doing this all day! That poor little hen was in love with my husband! Believe me, this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life! She continued to do this for several days every time she saw husband come near.

Well, unfortunately for everyone (you'll see) this little hen already had a husband of her own! We had a VERY LARGE rooster, the size of my 3 yr.old! Because he was big and mean and black, (and it was the 80's, remember) his name was" MR.T" and we were all afraid of him. Well, everyone except husband (although he did collect eggs with a childs baseball bat in his hand...)

After this chicken-y flirting had gone on for quite a few days, Mr.T obviously had enough of seeing one of his hen-wives giving too much attention to another male and decided to do something about it. One afternoon as husband was making his way through the grove, Mr.T leaped out from behind a tree and attacked husband at eye level, wings flapping and claws and spurs extended. He really meant business!! He clawed, pecked, and spurred husbands head and face, catching the corner of his eye and just missing hitting him in the temple with one of those deadly spurs! There was much blood and gore, but really only superficial wounds. I could hear the commotion all the way down the hill in the house!#*!/#*!!

Needless to say, that was Mr.T's last hour on earth, because, as you know, love triangles ALWAYS end badly. Someone always gets their heart (or neck, in this case!) broken.




...and that is my Chicken Love Story.