Bird sightings have created a fowl mood

What is it with chickens this year?
First there was a chicken that startled me by knocking on my mom’s door while I was going through her things after her death. Then there was a guy holding a chicken at the annual cookout. Last week there was a picture of my granddaughter holding a chicken. Today, up pops a photo of my grandson with a chicken in his lap and another snuggled up beside him. Are the chickens taking over the world or just looking for photo opportunities?
Maybe all these chicken sightings are in response to the Colonel Sanders impersonators running around lately. I especially like the extra-crispy one. Some of the others were downright creepy. Their fried chicken is good, even though they can’t seem to stick with just one spokesperson.
Some might say that the chickens are a sign from my mom telling me she is enjoying the afterlife. If that were so the chickens that keep coming into my own life would all be fried. She hated live chickens as much as I do.
Actually, I don’t hate them. I am just haunted by that big rooster that used to chase me whenever I was sent to gather eggs. Those wings and claws hurt when you are just a little kid. I was always afraid the hens would peck me when I reached under them to steal their eggs. That they never did was irrelevant.
I was still scared.
Mom wasn’t afraid of them. She simply didn’t like plucking them. I remember her sweating over a cauldron of boiling water, plucking one chicken after the next. I always kept out of her way because chicken plucking put her in a fowl (the spelling is intentional) mood.
However, she did love fried chicken legs, the greasier the better. She never did understand that I preferred white meat. She also thought I was wasting the good part every time I pulled off the skin. She told the Meals on Wheels people to not bring her chicken breasts, then would get upset that they didn’t bring her a substitute meal.
Apparently chickens, as we know them, started out as a bird in Asia. They can now be found worldwide. According to some sources chickens were first domesticated so they could be used in cockfights. It seems that violent spectator sports have a long history as it is possibly the world’s oldest continual sport. The ancient Greek city of Pergamum established a cockfighting amphitheater “to teach valor to future generations of soldiers.” I find it interesting that valor is to be learned from a bird whose name is synonymous with cowardice.
Cockfighting is illegal in this country, much to the relief of the combatants and to me because I think it is cruel to pit one animal against another.
Gallus gallus domesticus, as it is known in the scientific community, is an omnivore. I did not know this. Apparently they will eat mice and lizards along with the usual bugs and grain. I can’t find any references that indicate that they will eat small children, but why take that chance?
They are susceptible to the bird flu, which is very contagious and lethal. The disease can kill off 90 to 100 percent of birds in a flock in just 48 hours. And we think we have it bad when we get the flu.
I suppose I should expect to see chickens fairly often as estimates are that there are 25 billion chickens in this world. That’s billion, with a “B.” Wow. That’s more than any other bird species.
One of my relatives, Herbert Hoover, (not a close relative) once wanted everyone to have a chicken in every pot. While chickens may not be in every pot, most of us have consumed our share of the birds.
Now that I have written about them I hope they will fade into the background of my life and quit popping up all over the place.
Oh, and in answer to that old question as to why the chicken crossed the road, the answer is to prove to the opossum that it could be done.