Feral Chickens

by C. McGee

  Coming from a wealthy family, Lana went to the only elite private school on the island before heading off to undergrad at Pomona. After getting her master’s from one of the other fancy Claremont schools, she came back home to learn how to run the business her father built. I’m not really sure what that business is, but I’m fairly certain that it has a hand in nearly all of the island’s affairs. In summation, she’s a pretty big deal. That said, she does not come across as an entitled bitch, nor a ruthless businesswoman; more like a frank and determined pragmatist. I don’t like many females but I like Lana Okada.

  “What should I get in on?” I inquired.

  “This new resort that we’re looking to build in Hanalei. It’s going to be fairly small, just ten to fifteen suites, but extremely posh, like something you might see in Dubai.”

  “Isn’t that market kind of saturated?”

  “Quite the contrary. Tourism is back up near pre-recession highs, and resort occupancy rates are at one hundred percent during peak times so new rooms are needed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolutely. Not to mention the fact that the proposed resort would be profitable, regardless of the data I just cited.”

  “Why is that?” I inquired—I ask a lot of questions when discussing topics that interest me but I know little about. It seems like a smart thing to do.

  “Well,” Lana continued, speaking to Charlie and I with the same regard that she would give a CEO. “As of right now, Kauai has no super high-end resorts that cater exclusively to the ultra rich. It’s an uncontested niche that needs to be filled, and that is exactly what this resort will do. Furthermore, the vast majority of the island’s nice accommodations are in Princeville and Poipu, not Hanalei, this despite the fact that Hanalei is unquestionably the most aesthetically pleasing locale. Thus, the new resort will also have a tremendous geographic advantage. These two factors alone make the project a worthwhile proposition, and when one adds in the favorable macro conditions that I mentioned earlier, it becomes even more appealing.”

  “And you think that you’ll be able to get the community on board with this?”

  “That’s tough to say. I’m sure there will be some opposition, but it’s not like we’re building a nuclear waste repository; we’re building a small, high-end, eco-friendly resort. Not to mention the fact that the island’s unemployment rate has yet to return to pre-recession levels, so the jobs that the resort will create are much needed.”

  “Interesting. Do you have any literature I could check out?”

  “Of course,” Lana said, pulling papers out of a satchel by her feet. “And if you would like I can e-mail you some additional information.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Send it to me as well, please,” Charlie added.

  “No problem. I’ll e-mail both of you this afternoon.”

  “Me too!” Ethan interjected, as he came up and hugged me from behind.

  “Do you even know what we’re talking about?” I asked, amused.

  “Nope,” Ethan said, unabashed. “But if Lana is running it, and both you and Charlie are interested, I’m interested.”

  I wanted to rebut Ethan’s logic but it was actually rather sound, so I just smiled and shook my head.

  “What’s the minimum investment?” I asked, turning back to Lana.

  “Seven hundred and fifty thousand. It’s a fair amount, but I think it’s a worthwhile venture.”

  My butt cheeks tightened at the sound of the number and then loosened as I considered what might result from the investment’s potential success. No more work, no more Sage, no more house-near-an-elementary-school, no more kids encouraging chickens.

  It was at least worth looking into.

  Chapter 9

  Fear: A Lesson in Motivation

  “Yeah, Mom, I can believe that.”

  “But it’s not like the man couldn’t speak American.”

  “English, Mom.”

  “Right. Well, you know what I mean, sweetheart.”

  “Yeah. Listen, it’s not an issue of speaking English, it’s an issue of speaking a particular brand of English—Upper-Midwestern to be precise. The vast majority of the world’s English-speaking population would have had no idea what you were talking about. For most people, ‘My husband and I are going to the Sioux game, do you wanna come with?’ is an incomprehensible question.”

  “Oh come on now, how could you not know what I meant by that?” my mom asked, in a tone that pleaded for agreement.

  We had been talking on the phone for fifteen minutes and she had expressed at least four separate concerns regarding people that had recently moved to her area. The last and most amusing of these concerns being the sense of consternation that she felt after a newcomer proved unable to decipher her generous offer to bring him up to Grand Forks for a night of ice hockey spectating.

  “Well, for starters,” I responded. “When most people hear the word ‘Sioux’ they think of Native Americans not college hockey, and secondly the phrase ‘come with’ is not used anywhere but the Upper Midwest. It’s some sort of linguistic anomaly; the by-product of a shit ton of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants learning English from one another.”

  “That’s interesting, sweetie, but is there any reason for the S-word?”

  “What, ‘shit’?” I said. I knew what S-word she was talking about, I just wanted to say it again.

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mom, that’s not even a bad wor—”

  “Hey, do not take the Lord’s name in vain, young lady,” my mom asserted, driven to uncharacteristic firmness by my violation of the third commandment.

  “Sorry, I just got a little frustrated.”

  “I understand but that’s no reason to swear like that.”

  “All right, Mom,” I said, too exhausted to contest her irrationality. “Well, listen, I have a project that I need to wrap up before it gets too late. So …”

  “Of course, of course, get back to it, sweetheart. I love you, and I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Love you too, Mom.” After pressing the end button, I threw my phone onto a vacant lawn chair and headed back toward the garage for some more screws. I felt a little bad for ending the call so abruptly, but I was not in the right frame of mind to continue talking with her. I love my mother, but our phone conversations can sometimes prove wearisome, especially when there is something else I would rather be doing, and, at that moment, there was definitely something else I wanted to be doing. The multi-chicken guillotine was nearing completion.

  Remember that day in the garage when I was sharpening my axe and came up with a plan to solve my chicken woes, this was my thought process:

  • Jesus, this blade is dull. I want the chickens to die but not from blunt force trauma. I better spend some time sharpening it.

  • My nails look like shit.

  • Bleh, sharpening this blade is boring. I guess it’s worth it though, so long as it takes out a few of those stupid birds.

  • Is it weird how much I enjoy killing those chickens?

  • Kind of, but it’s not like I’m sadistic about it. I do it in more of a philanthropic way. It’s as if I’m doing the island a service, ridding it of unwanted intruders that disrupt the natural environment.

  • Don’t lie to yourself, Ingrid, you hate those goddamn birds. Your decision to execute them is completely self-serving.

  • Too bad the chickens are so rampant that my picking them off one at a time makes only a small difference.

  • What’s my running tally at now, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight?

  • I suppose that a war of attrition in which I slowly triumph over the island’s chickens would be fine if they weren’t waking me up on a daily basis.

  • But they are waking me up on a daily basis. Large numbers of them congregating right outside my house, drawn there by six- to ten-year-olds looking to either dispense with the parts of their lunch they don’t like or enterta
in themselves by feeding stupid ugly birds.

  • Jesus, those kids must be hard up for entertainment if they think feeding chickens is fun. Where I come from that’s a chore.

  • I suppose that since I’m unwilling to patiently endure the chicken cacophony until the war of attrition is over I better take some bolder steps; figure out a way to winnow down the number of rat-birds loitering around my place.

  • The best option would be to expedite my war with the chickens, to figure out a way to completely rid the island of them in a swift fashion.

  • Unfortunately, that’s not really feasible. If it were, I would have already done it. So, I better focus my efforts on the immediate vicinity.

  • Okay. Focus.

  • All right, so, in order to reduce the gargantuan number of wild chickens near my home, I first need to identify why there is a gargantuan number of wild chickens near my home. The answer to this query is twofold. One, I live in Kauai where chickens spawn like Mormon fundamentalists free of governmental regulations. Two, the elementary school kids entice them to the area.

  • Obviously, the elementary school kids are the part of the problem that I need to address. No matter how many chickens I kill, they’ll just keep on coming so long as the children keep on feeding them.

  • Why do Mormon fundamentalists have so many kids? I suppose it’s because of the whole sister wives business. More wives = More kids. Perhaps, the better question might be, why do mainstream Mormons have so many kids? You can’t chalk that up to polygamy.

  • Since the elementary school children are the root of the problem, it’s their behavior that must be modified as this will in turn modify the chickens’ behavior. Quite simply, if I can get the children to stop feeding the chickens, the chickens will stop hanging around my place.

  • How do you alter children’s behavior?

  • Reason? No. You cannot reason with elementary school kids. I know. I used to be one—a shitty one. If some woman would have told me to stop feeding the chickens because of X, Y, and Z, I would have said, “Shut your mouth you old hag,” and fed the chickens even more.

  • Discipline? No. That might work for some of the kids, but it would only encourage the ones with attitude. Not to mention the fact that I have no authority over them, and, consequently, am unable to institute disciplinary measures.

  • If not “reason” and not “discipline,” then what? Fear? Yes. Children respond to fear. I can do fear.

  • Maybe I can’t do fear. Chickens aren’t very scary.

  • But headless chickens are!

  • If one headless chicken is scary, then a whole bunch of headless chickens would be shit-your-pants terrifying.

  • Problem: On average, headless chickens only flop around for a minute or two. If I were to behead and release them one at a time, I would not receive the desired effect. I want a horde of headless chickens coming at those kids, not a trickle.

  • Answer: behead a whole bunch of chickens at once!

  • If chickens can live without a head, then there must be a record for “chicken to live longest without a head.” I wonder how long that tough little bitch lived for? Probably like an hour.

  • New problem: how can you behead a whole bunch of chickens at once?

  • Answer: create a multi-chicken guillotine!

  • No, that’s impractical.

  • But, awesome.

  • I have hung out with guys for too long.

  • I wonder if the headless chicken record is in Guinness?

  • Guillotine is a funny word.

  • Considering the fact that I only have two hands, getting a whole bunch of chickens to lie still for a mass beheading may prove difficult.

  • Maybe I can make little pillories that hold their heads in place?

  • No. That would probably be disconcerting. They would be flopping around the whole time.

  • Perhaps the multi-chicken guillotine is not meant to be.

  • Nope! The multi-chicken guillotine is meant to be! I can hypnotize the chickens, that way they will lay still for their beheading.

  • Dear Uncle Erik, thank you for teaching me to hypnotize chickens. Who knew that would come in handy?

  • Chicken guillotines don’t make themselves. Better get to work.

  • Perhaps I have a touch of ADD.

  The stage was set. I was decked out in camouflage, the multi-chicken guillotine was in place and operational, the monstrosity of chickens I had captured were roaming around a makeshift pen a couple yards away, and the elementary school kids were en route.

  Moving as quickly as possible, I started taking the chickens out of their detention center one at a time. After lying them down on their backs, I twirled my finger in front of their stupid faces, mesmerizing them into a hypnotic state. Ten minutes later, I had thirty birds laid out on the guillotine ready for the blade. My timing was perfect. Within thirty seconds of the final hypnosis the last of the children had arrived. The moment was upon me.

  Permitting no time for hesitation, I gave a firm tug on the guillotine’s rope instigating the angled blade’s descent. The sharp edge flew decisively toward the ground, finishing its fall with an authoritative crack. The thirty feathery necks gave little resistance.

  For a second, following the blade’s descent, all was calm, and then—pandemonium. Acting as though they planned it, the headless corpses simultaneously exploded off the chopping block in a volcanic eruption of poultry. Everywhere I looked there was flapping wings and kicking legs. Prepared for this, I immediately started grabbing the headless bodies and lobbing them onto the street, an arced trail of blood tracing the flight pattern of each. I could say that it was strangely beautiful, but that would be a lie, it was an emetic fucking horror show—but an effective emetic fucking horror show!

  The kids started screaming the moment that the headless birds arrived and didn’t stop until they were … well, I don’t know, I never heard them stop. Occasionally they would pause to spit out chicken feathers, but other than that their noises of terror were constant. Although the bedlam of the moment made it difficult to process much of anything, some of what the kids screamed did stick with me. The five most memorable of these being:

  • 1: “Mom told me this would happen!” (Weird. What sort of crazy asshole mom threatens/warns her kid about a cyclone of headless chickens?)

  • 2: “Oh my god, my hair!” (This from an elementary school girl. Can you imagine what sort of high maintenance bitch she is going to grow up to be?)

  • 3: “It’s the end times!” (I have to assume that this child’s parents think the world is six thousand years old.)

  • 4: “Not again.” (Seriously, this happened to you before?)

  • 5: “I’m sorry I got the twenty piece nuggets! I’m sorry!” (Hilarious, I couldn’t see anything, but I’m sure that the kid that screamed this was a chunk monster.)

  With the headless rat-birds out in the street, and the children running for cover, I pulled the multi-chicken guillotine deeper into the jungle, covered it with a camouflage blanket, and headed home. After a forty-five minute shower, I got dressed and went to work.

  Chapter 10

  Sage Advice or Advice for Sage or Chicken-ocalypse

  “Chicken-ocalypse,” that’s what the viral video was titled. It had over a thousand views by the time I got to work. A thousand views! I’m a millennial, yet the power of the Internet still blows me away.

  “Did you see this,” Sage said, pulling up the video on her phone.

  “See what?”

  “This,” she said, turning the screen toward me.

  I responded with a surprised face. It was a genuine reaction. Although the events unfolding on Sage’s phone were neither shocking nor new, the fact that they had been captured on film was both shocking and new. Perhaps it was naïve, but I truly believed that the incident would go unrecorded.

  Those kids must not have been too traumatized, I thought. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have taken th
e time to press record.

  Mistaking my surprise for outrage, Sage spoke.

  “I know, right? It’s disgusting and immoral,” she said, referring to the video.

  I didn’t take issue with Sage calling the Chicken-ocalypse “disgusting.” It was. I did, however, object to her assertion that it was immoral. Those kids might have been scared, but it’s not like that event was going to scar them for life. In fact, they probably enjoyed all the attention it got them.

  “How is that immoral, Sage?” I asked, poorly disguising my annoyance.

  “All those chickens just senselessly massacred. It’s a tragedy. The person that did this should be ashamed.”

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” I replied, unable to curb my frustration. She wasn’t even upset for the children; she was upset for the goddamn poultry. I had been up since five a.m., herding, hypnotizing, and executing chickens, I was in no mood for such high-horse-hippie bullshit.

  “Listen, you hairy-legged cunt,” I said, going for it, not holding back. “Those are fucking chickens. Chickens! We’re not watching Memory of the Camps, we’re watching a fucking YouTube video of headless birds that some ten-year-old posted to the Internet. R.E.M is playing in the background for Christ’s sake. The content of the video can’t be that serious if “The End of the World As We Know It” is acting as the tongue-in-cheek soundtrack, so don’t go throwing around the word “tragedy,” just because it makes you feel morally superior.”

  Sage’s shock at my outburst transitioned into indignation as I said the words “morally superior.”

  “Morally superior?” she said, stuttering, flabbergasted. “Well, I never … It has never been my … I have never acted morally superior to anyon—”