A few days ago a Rhode Island Red chicken was apprehended at the Pentagon for trespassing in a secure area. As if on cue, the old shame and blame -- Why did the chicken cross the road? etc. -- detonated in the DC media, going viral. A Pentagon spokesperson refused to identify where exactly the hen was caught lurking. It’sclassified, she said. We do know that the Rhode Island Red was photographed, likely footprinted and denied her Miranda rights. Then she vanished. Whisked off to an undisclosed Virginia farm, we’re told. “Virginia farm” is a well-known CIA euphemism for “interrogation facility”. Fowl play is suspected. So many questions.
I raised chickens for years. I learned chickens can jump higher than a house because houses can’t jump. You can’t clean the coop after sundown because roosting chickens are cagey. They’ll get the drop on you. All our chickens sported names, but only a Japanese Silky hen comes to mind. Like a good Texas cowboy, my little brother named her “Forty Five”. She was not a blue ribbon winner, but Forty Five was an egg-cellent broody. She would accept any clutch of motherless eggs as her very own. Her great triumph? To lead a dozen or more adopted baby chicks out into the yard to peck and scratch the dirt for the first time.
Forty Five didn’t ask a lot of questions. She sat on golf balls in her nesting box until we had a deserted egg clutch to swap out with her. She never asked about the switcheroo or why those golf ball eggs were so heavy. Or why all her offspring looked like the neighbor’s children. Forty Five just loved her babies. Well, unfortunately there’s been no break in the Pentagon case. It remains an unsolved mystery. All that’s left going forward is the hope of chicken activists everywhere who “dream of a better world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned”. Fr. Barker
A few days ago a Rhode Island Red chicken was apprehended at the Pentagon for trespassing in a secure area. As if on cue, the old shame and blame -- Why did the chicken cross the road? etc. -- detonated in the DC media, going viral. A Pentagon spokesperson refused to identify where exactly the hen was caught lurking. It’s classified, she said. We do know that the Rhode Island Red was photographed, likely footprinted and denied her Miranda rights. Then she vanished. Whisked off to an undisclosed Virginia farm, we’re told. “Virginia farm” is a well-known CIA euphemism for “interrogation facility”. Fowl play is suspected. So many questions.