Chicken catching is a real occupation, and it is a thing people do when they…
a) wanna make good dollas.
b) wanna make any kind of dollas because without dollas then no mo’ food.
c) wanna replace real life problems with chickens and have seven hours of intense therapy.
d) wanna witness the start of the zombie apocalypse.
Of course when I signed up for my first go at chicken catching, I didn’t find this hazardous occupation by any means capable of starting the end of the world with zombies. But mark my words, from my illustrious experience in a barn of 5,000 chickens…zombies can definitely happen.
And I assure you, it’ll happen in a chicken barn somewhere in Canada.
I guess catching chickens is a sort of “rite of passage” to some farm folk–a means to assert oneself into a higher, respected place in small-town society. People say, “Oh, wow! You went chicken catching before? You brave soul. I hear it’s ghastly!”
Oh yes, People. It is.
I didn’t really know what to expect when we arrived at the foreboding barn of beastly poultry. But I will never forget the horrors for which I saw whence stepping into the barn in my raggedy second-hand clothes (AKA Chicken Poop Shield Armor.)
Chickens. Thousands of them. Tiny, white, feathery fiends bawking about, stinking the barn with a sort of rancid smell for which I’d never smelt before. When we took too much a step near the white sea of feathers, it was as though the Kraken awakened and literal waves of chickens would squawk over one another–like at any moment, a giant zombie chicken would emerge from the ground and inaugurate the end of the world.
But I have to be brave, I told myself as we began herding the chickens together–including the Kraken chicken that surely existed underneath the tidal waves of smaller chickens. I must conquer my fears.
But then the lights went out. I don’t know about you, but conquering is quite hard to do in the dark.
In a barn of 5,000 angry chickens, the lights went out, and only a few of my fellow chicken catching companions weld lights to their foreheads. They said it was to keep the chickens calm. Did they ever think about maybe keeping the chicken catchers calm, too? No, of course not.
Out of all the chicken fears I was processing, now I had to process them in the dark.
Of course, chickens don’t care if you’ve got issues. They will poop on you and slap you with all their might (I got razor-feather slapped with an entire wing that night), but the job must. be. done.
So I rolled up my sleeves (metaphorically because ain’t no bird gunna poop on my skin), and went to WERK. And humorous it must’ve been to see, because the chickens would scream like… “OW! OW OW OUCHIE OW!” And, you know, you just kinda wanna say “Frick I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean to–ah man, sorry about that, oops–stop pecking at me please, I just need to–so sorry, there, lil’ fella, I just–ouch, okay that’s fair but–“
That was probably what I was mumbling around as I tried to pick up two chickens in one hand (while the skilled chickensmen could pick up four probably using a single finger. In each hand. While climbing a sheer rock-face and breaking a tree in half. Or something.) Anyway, I did my best that my tiny fingers could do, and did it for seven hours.
Somewhere along the line, I discovered that this is what God probably meant when He said “let them have dominion over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
He was talking about chickens.
I think my cousin may have heard me pick up some mean little creepers and tell them “I’m taking dominion over you now so stop being mean!” I also discovered the best way to pick them up without them pecking all nasty is to pet them first. They forget they’re being hunted so they just kinda squat a little and get all comfortable and then BAM, YOU JUST GRAB ‘EM BY THEIR SKINNY FEET AND HURRY, HURRY, HURRY TO THE PEOPLE THAT GIVE THEM SHOTS AND THEN HURRY, HURRY, HURRY TO THE GUY THAT PUTS THEM IN THE CAGES AND then you’re done.
Then you get more. And do it again. For seven hours 🙂
Anyway, this was my adventure catching chickens for the first time in the middle of nowhere, Canada. It was a test of my true durability. My body was broken for the next two days but whatever, at least I’m not a chicken.
Ha.
Okay bye.
Allison the Adventurer
