People often ask me if I speak other languages and I always tell them, well, yes, I do. I speak chicken. But I should explain really. I speak chicken with an North American accent. And it’s very useful to speak chicken to be honest because you can go into a farmyard setting anywhere in North America and you can converse with the chickens.
It seems to calm the chickens tremendously. I have found, however, that they don’t speak the same chicken in India or in Poland or in France. So it seems that every jurisdiction has its own level of chicken. So how did I learn how to speak chicken? And I’m not fluent, to be honest, because I do know many words like how are you today and everything fine, you know, like this.
But how did I learn chicken? Well, we had a Bantam rooster by the name of Charlie and, of course, around 20 hens and then 3 other roosters as well. But Charlie was a nice chicken, you know, and we had a relationship. We seemed to really understand each other, But he just did not like the other roosters. And over time, he killed all 3 of them and had the hens to himself.
Right? So Charlie is alone in the barnyard and everything would have been fine. But, you know, sometimes when you’re a little bit arrogant, you push the envelope a little bit too far. We also had a black lab. Now, for whatever reason, Charlie hated the black lab, Max.
Now Max wasn’t very clever. Charlie was the clever one. So you would think that Charlie would just leave it alone but no way. Anyhow, one day, my grandfather, the sea captain, retired now, he came for a visit and he thought it would be rather charming in the morning to go and feed the chickens. So he proceeded to feed the chickens and then he made the strategic error of leaving the door, the run door open which allowed Charlie to come out into the lawn.
So Charlie comes out, surveys what’s going on in the lawn and sees my grandfather proceeding across this lawn and decides to attack him, to ascertain his position, if you will, his hierarchy in the garden. So he flew up and he knocked my grandfather’s glasses off. And as he bent down to pick up his glasses, Charlie speared him which produced quite the kerfuffle. And in all of this, Max arrives and he sees Charlie, so the fight is on. Then my mother arrived and she grabs a broom and begins to beat Charlie and Max.
And hopefully not my grandfather, but I don’t think so. I’m sorry. Right? But you can imagine this is going on. This is just like right out of Charlotte’s Web almost.
So Charlie and Max back and forth, back and forth. Finally, Max gets the upper hand and kills poor Charlie. But Max won’t believe that Charlie is dead, so he continues to grab him and shake him and throw him up in the air, But Charlie is finished. And, you know, after this, I was kind of heartbroken, really. I didn’t really have any opportunity to learn new words in chicken and I just kind of left it alone.
It didn’t seem to be the same anymore. But what does this teach us? Certainly, that we can never go too far in life. We must be just a little bit careful with the kind of things that we do. And sometimes, we should learn to take on our adversary at the right moment.
You know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary and, of course, critical thinking is great.