There’s a lot of good can be said about having a few chickens around. Most folks know that. A few eggs each day and they pretty much earn their keep, well the hens do anyway. You’ll see ‘em prancing around, poking at the dirt and keeping the bothersome crawling things in check. Little chicks, yellow puffballs that they are, do a darn good job of keeping young ‘uns occupied, playing with ‘em and petting ‘em and such. Yep, generally chickens do more good for you than not.
Still, sure shootin’, there’s gonna be one gone bad every now and then. A body can’t tell it by looking at their little peeper eyes, but somewhere around when those first white feathers start taking the place of that yellow fluff, it starts showing up. And, then you know it…. you got yourself a chicken gone bad.
Well, that’s exactly what happened to Velma Underhill over in Wilson Township back in the summer of ‘41. She was on her way to the coop one morning when her neighbor, Axel Meyerdahl, came running from across the road, eyes big as saucers.
“Velma,” she said, “you’ve got one Bunyan-sized chicken in the coop, and he’s got a fox by the tail!”
Well, I guess that fox learned his lesson. He’s never seen a chicken that towers above the haymow!
