pictures not original to text

Maggie was a giant chicken. Now, if you are one of those individuals who are frequently plagued by nightmares about giant chickens chasing you, I recommend you don’t read on; I wouldn’t want to frighten you even more.

          Where was I? Oh yes. Maggie, despite being large in size, had a very friendly personality and wouldn’t harm a fly – except, of course, if it presented itself as her dinner. She grew up on a farm with her mum and lots of little brothers and sisters. Little being the operative word. Maggie was so big that she even frightened her siblings sometimes.

          Eventually, her mum had enough. Maggie had accidentally crushed three of the new eggs when she attempted to warm them under her enormous wings, so they were only good for scrambled breakfast. Of course Maggie had apologised tearfully, but the disgust on her sisters' faces, who were all very graceful and had never broken anything in their lives, was evident. “I’ve had enough, Maggie,” her mum said, and without any further ado she evicted poor Maggie from the henhouse.

          Poor Maggie didn’t know what to do. She was beside herself, having slain the unborn babies and being thrown out of her home by her own mother. All she had wanted was to give them a little warmth and comfort! She cried as she walked away, and walked, and cried some more, and kept on walking until she had no idea where she was. As she was walking (and crying), anger rose in her. It wasn’t fair! She wasn’t an evil chicken! The other animals were afraid of her because she was big, but at the end of the day, she was really only a chicken, a meek, mild-mannered chicken who wouldn’t harm a fly.

          As she was so walking (and crying) in this manner, Billy the fox crossed her path. Billy was hungry. He hadn’t eaten for days, and his coat, once shiny and red, was now dull. His ribs were clearly visible, he was a sorry sight. Nevertheless, Maggie, being a chicken, was petrified. A fox! What was she going to do, all on her own and miles from home? Surely the fox was going to kill her and devour her for his dinner.

          Billy, on the other hand, wasn’t feeling too brave either. This was without a doubt the biggest chicken he had ever seen, and although his first thought was that he would never be hungry again if he killed this chicken, he was having reservations about his ability to actually kill it. So they stood and stared at each other for a while, Maggie mumbling a prayer, while Billy contemplated how to best clamp his fierce jaws around the chicken’s throat.

          Eventually Maggie finished praying and, surprised and excited to still be alive, started flapping her wings.

          Billy was stunned. As the big chicken started to move about the earth shook, nearby smaller trees were felled by one flap of her giant wing, and the noise she started to make caused the hair at the back of Billy’s neck to stand up. In a split second, Billy did what he had once seen an ostrich do on a wildlife program on TV: He buried his head in the shaking ground, hoping that he would thus be safe from the overexcited chicken.

          He wasn’t. Maggie, running around like the proverbial headless hen her mother had been telling her about, didn’t even see the fox as she planted one gigantic foot on his backside and buried him. When she finally stopped flapping, out of breath and not quite sure what had gotten into her, the fox was nowhere to be seen.

          Maggie, the giant chicken lived a content, albeit rather lonely life, and for a long time wondered whatever had happened to the fox, who could, after all, have easily killed and eaten her, had he just had the courage to face her.

          And the moral of the story? Even if the chicken appears to be monstrous and far too big to tackle, it remains, after all, just a chicken. Every chicken can be overcome! Chickens rarely go away if you ignore them, they have a habit of getting bigger. Burying your head in the sand has never solved a chicken. Or something along those lines. You know what I mean.

******

Now, Maggie told me, she wished she and the fox could have been friends....then she wouldn't be so lonely...because... they could have "danced"...:)....;)...

****