HIPPO BRIGADE

Fried Chicken, Any One?

One of my favorite words is chicken. I love the way it sounds. Chic-en. Chick-in! That’s funny stuff.

Speaking of funny stuff and chicken. When I was in 7th grade, I had this cooky science teacher called, Mr. Butler. His claim to fame was that he had over 100 t-shirts. Among these were cartoon depictions of the solar system, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, and a air brushed scene of pond life. To him it was all about quantity, not quality.

At the beginning of the school year there was a tank of chicken eggs in the back of the class room. They were under hot flood lights which looked liked the lights they use at Mc Donalds to warm up the Big Macs. The eggs eventually hatched, and at Spring Break a few students were given the prestigious opportunity granted by Mr. Freak Show Butler to take the baby chicks home for the week. Among the chosen few were my friend Jenna and me. We decided to take care of our chicks together in one tank at her house.

We didn’t have a maternal hair on our head, we never played with dolls or house when we were growing up. We never mentored the younger kids on the block, instead we made them get us Diet Coke and cupcakes from their kitchens, but for some reason, we felt like we got this. We were going to rock the shit out of taking care of baby chickens. I mean, really? How hard could it be?

The walk from school was electrifying. We were so excited that our skin was glowing and we couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. Which, come to think of it, was probably a combination of Oxy pads, Jolt cola, Aqua Net, and new chicken mama pride.

When we got to Jenna’s house, her dad pulled out an old fish tank and filled it with cedar. We put a mesh lid on top and remembered that we had to keep the chicks very, very warm, so we grabbed two flood lights from the garage and put them directly over the cage. Then we realized that we had to feed the chickens, so we jumped in the back of her dad’s Jeep and he drove us to the feed store. While we were browsing the isles for freeze dried worms and maggots, we found a sweet little baby duck, and Jenna begged her dad to bring it home. He eventually gave in and we were quickly on our way to having an entire farm.

We returned to Jenna’s house, and ran up stairs to check on the chickens. We were so excited for them to meet the new duck and eat dirt flavored meal worms. But when we rounded the corner to her room we could smell the faint, yet distinct odor of fried chicken. We ran to the tank and discovered that not even an hour after bringing the baby chicks home we had fried them to death! There they were: both of them with their sweet little chicken feet pointed straight to the sky.

I’ll never look at fried chicken the same.