Something 4 The Weekend # 184

The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride: "Lovecraft In Brooklyn" [mp3]

Friends and casual readers of this blog are well aware of my deep and abiding hatred for fucking squirrels. They're vile vermin that would be hunted to extinction if this were a more perfect world. But most of you don't know that I also loathe chickens.

The year was 1987, and I was hanging out one Saturday afternoon at a friend's house. We were out in the yard, drinking malt liquor, smoking weed, and listening to Jethro Tull on a boombox. At some point I started playing catch with a football with my buddy's younger brother.

It's at this point in the story that I should mention that his family owned about a dozen chickens that they allowed to wander around their yard. I didn't loathe chickens at this point, but that was about to change.

My buddy's younger brother threw the ball way over my head, so I turned around to run and fetch it, and it was at this point that one of the chickens fluttered and flopped and flew straight into my face without warning.

Now, some of you might be saying right now, "but Hank, chickens can't fly," to which I can only reply, "yeah, they sorta can, you dumbasses." Chickens can get themselves airborn for short distances, which they often do in the wild to check out their surroundings. I bet you also didn't know that in the wild they usually roost in trees. How do you think they get up into those trees? Here's a hint - they don't climb 'em like fucking squirrels.

So, anyways, a big fucking chicken flies into my face, and I immediately crumple to the ground in exquisite pain, with blood spilling everywhere because the bird's beak had stabbed me in the forehead.

If the story ended here, we might be able to simply call this a random event, but the story doesn't end here because as I'm laying on the ground, writhing in pain and bleeding everywhere, several other chickens immediately attack me like a pack of ravenous wolves. Tiny wolves with feathers instead of fur, and beaks instead of fangs.

I admit that at this point I passed out, and you can call me a pussy if you must, but you weren't there.

When I came back into consciousness, there were cuts and scratches all over my body, and my clothes were tattered and torn, with random feathers stuck to the drying blood. I wept softly. My buddy's younger brother was bawling. My buddy was laughing. The chickens had retreated to the area behind their garage.

A lesser man would fear chickens after such an incident, but I am not a lesser man. I am a great man, and I did what only a great man would and could do - on that day I started to loathe, nay hate, chickens, and twenty-three days later, my hatred for them still abides, and each and every Saturday since, I've eaten a 10-pack of McNuggets with honey mustard dipping sauce.

Never forget.

Hotcha! Hank