Feral Chickens

by C. McGee

  • Croissants are too small, there is no way you could conceal a mongoose inside of one, and even if you could, the mongoose would break out of that buttery shell in a matter of seconds.

  • A woman would notice if her fake boobs were made out of mongooses. The lumpiness would give it away. Also, the mongooses would find breathing very difficult.

  • It would be easy enough to get boa constrictors to swallow mongooses. Getting them to spit the mongooses out, however, would be tricky. Not to mention the fact that you would then have to figure out a way to smuggle the boa constrictors onto the island.

  Even the more run-of-the-mill smuggling techniques that I read about offered me little in terms of plausible solutions. Tunnels, luggage with false bottoms, hollowed out books, airplane drops, none of these were feasible. People need connections in order to employ such tactics; connections of the nefarious type, and unless you count my cousin Kris that spent one night in jail for stealing a bottle of Jägermeister, I know no nefarious types.

  I stood up from the library computer discouraged but not defeated. I hadn’t found the answers that I was looking for, but I was confident that I would be able to figure something out. The vast majority of smugglers that I read about were dummies, yet many of them succeeded for years before they were apprehended. If they could do it, then I could too.

  On my way out of the library, I caught sight of Charlie checking out some embarrassing chick lit. I was tempted to stop and give him shit about his book selection, but I refrained. Anonymity was the entire reason for my trip so a discussion with a friend seemed ill advised. I flipped up my hood and walked past him without a word.

  Chapter 15

  Duck, Duck, Gray Duck

  “Yes, Mom, I can believe he got picked on for that.”

  “Well, I never. I mean, I just can’t believe …”

  “Listen, I’m not saying that it’s right, I’m just saying that it’s not surprising.”

  My mother was upset. Her concern was understandable but overblown. My nephew was getting picked on at school. Evidently, he had become the object of ridicule because he insisted on calling the game that is commonly known as Duck, Duck, Goose, by its Upper-Midwestern moniker, Duck, Duck, Gray Duck. Kids pick on each other over the most random shit.

  “Well, we’ve called it Duck, Duck, Gray Duck forever, and no one has ever said anything before,” my mother protested.

  “Yeah, well there are more kids from out of the area now and in most parts of the country the game is known as Duck, Duck, Goose, so Duck, Duck, Gray Duck proponents are probably in the minority at this point.”

  “How can we be in the minority in our own town?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Yes it is, young lady. Don’t you get sassy with me.”

  Understanding that the conversation was on the precipice of disaster, ready to snowball down into an abyss of more serious concerns, I decided to steer the dialogue back toward the minor problem from which it began.

  “I wasn’t trying to be sassy, Mom. And I am upset about the whole bullying thing. I’m just saying that it’s kind of weird to call it Duck, Duck, Gray Duck, and I can see how some of his classmates might make fun of him for it. I mean kids can be ruthless. Maybe you should just tell him to start calling it Duck, Duck, Goose. I bet that would lay the problem to rest.”

  “But he shouldn’t have to do that. That’s what it’s called here, Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.”

  “Yeah, well maybe not anymore.”

  “…” my mom replied.

  “…” I reciprocated.

  After an awkward spell of silence, my mom said, “The hot dish is almost done, sweetie, so I got to go. Love you.”

  “Love you too, Mom,” I replied, accepting her goodbye, enabling her willful avoidance of difficult realities.

  You know, I thought, as my phone flipped back to the home screen, I don’t even think Duck, Duck, Gray Duck is a North Dakota thing; I’m pretty sure it’s Minnesotan. I bet they don’t even call it that in the western part of the state. It’s probably Duck, Duck, Goose, out there, just like everywhere else.

  The biweekly conversation with my mother complete, I went over to the cupboard, pulled out an assortment of prepackaged food, and threw it in a backpack. I didn’t need much; Lana said it would only take us a couple of hours to paddle the Huleia.

  Having prepared for the day’s kayak adventure, I poured a glass of POG juice and headed toward the back porch. On the way I glanced at the closet where my .22 resides. Smiling, I walked right passed it, proceeding directly to my comfy deck chair. Feet up, drink in hand, I spent the next fifteen minutes relaxing in the morning sun. There were no interruptions. It was nice—for a quarter of an hour anyway. Had Lana taken any longer I might have gotten bored.

  Our little kayak trip up and down the Huleia was enjoyable. It was different from the island’s other rivers, swampier, stiller. Had it been dusk it might have felt ominous, but it wasn’t so it didn’t. It felt like what it was: a leisurely, midmorning paddle in paradise.

  Lana and I talked most of the way. I enjoyed our conversation. Generally speaking, I prefer spending time with guys as they tend to be less dramatic and more direct than women, but Lana is an exception.

  Toward the end of our journey, I asked her some more questions about the investment opportunity that she had told me about earlier that month. It was something to which I had been giving a great deal of thought. The zip-line job wasn’t exactly a six-figure gig, but at least it used to inject my bank statement with an occasional plus symbol. Ever since I quit, I have found it difficult to log in to my online bank account; the relentless list of subtractions is just too much of a downer. Although the total at the bottom of the page is still large, I know that it is not large enough. It will be winnowed down to nothing before I am, and that troubles me.

  The more Lana told me about the resort, the more confident I became. It seemed a sound investment and if Lana’s projections were anywhere near correct, it would provide me with enough money to continue enjoying Kauai for the rest of my life.

  As Lana and I pulled our kayaks onto the shore, I looked over at her and said, “I’m in.”

  An hour later, sitting at my kitchen table, a mason jar filled with champagne in my hand, I wrote Lana a check for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. We clanked our glasses together and drank the cheap bubbly down in one. It felt good.

  Our business completed, Lana moved on to a new subject. “Holy shit, I’m fucking exhausted from that paddle,” she said while refilling our jars. “How about you?”

  “Actually, I feel pretty good,” I replied. It was true, I did. Although I paddled circles around Ethan and Charlie on a regular basis, I never considered myself an exceptional kayaker. I always assumed that my superiority was due to their ineptitude more than my ability. Lana’s exhaustion made me reconsider that conclusion. Perhaps I’ve been underestimating my abilities, I thought. Maybe, I’m actually decent at kayaking.

  A small grin of pride on my face, I took another sip of champagne. As I set my mason jar down on the table two ideas struck me.

  Chapter 16

  Another Plan

  Ideas That Struck Me the Moment That I Sat Down My Mason Jar of Champagne:

  • 1: I’m good at kayaking, and I enjoy it. I should get a job as a river guide.

  • 2: I’m good at kayaking, and I enjoy it. I should use that skill to smuggle mongooses onto the island.

  In order to accomplish the first idea I needed nothing more than initiative. There are a number of river guides on the island, and I was confident that with a bit of legwork I could land a job.

  The second idea required more. It required initiative plus a bunch of other shit: rigor and forethought and organization and animal cages, to name a few. In order to make the demanding task seem more manageable I decided to make a list. Lists make everything better.

  At first, I titled the checklist Mongoose Smuggling To-Do List. Obviously,
that was a poor choice. Overtly incriminating titles are best avoided. I flushed that piece of paper down the toilet. Next, I labeled it: Importing an Assassination. “An Assassination” seemed like a good name for a group of mongooses and “importing” sounded better than “smuggling.” It took me about five seconds to realize that this was also a horrible title, perhaps more eye-catchingly felonious than the first. I flushed that piece of paper down the toilet as well. Finally, I settled on Operation Flush a Turd. “A Turd,” I concluded was a good name for a group of feral chickens, and “flush” seemed an accurate but benign way to describe a massacre. The word “operation” made the whole thing seem more legitimate.

  OPERATION FLUSH A TURD

  • 1. Buy a better kayak. (Your crappy sit-on-top won’t make it to Oahu.)

  • 2. Give your new kayak a cool name.

  • 3. Practice packing the new kayak.

  — a. How much food can I fit?

  — b. How much water?

  — c. How many wild animal traps?

  — d. How much camping gear?

  • 4. Train with the new kayak. (Make sure that you can paddle seventy miles; you’ll feel quite the fool if you get stuck in the middle of the ocean.)

  • 5. Find a sail for your new kayak.

  • 6. Figure out how to trap mongooses.

  — a. Will they fit in your current traps?

  — b. Will they fall for your current traps?

  — c. What do they eat?

  • 7. Figure out how to transport mongooses.

  • 8. Determine the best departure and arrival points. (Somewhere that’s easy to paddle into but unpopulated.)

  • 9. Research the weather.

  • 10. Find out the best spot to release the mongooses.

  — a. What will maximize their chance of survival?

  — b. Figure out how to avoid getting attacked once you release them.

  • 11. Buy a bottle of champagne so that you can drink to your success once you return.

  Within an hour of the list’s completion, I had the first item checked off.

  I bought my new kayak off Lana. She had a number of them for me to choose from. Over the years, her family had continually upgraded their vessels while never bothering to sell or dispose of their old ones. I suppose that when you have a five-car garage, space isn’t a huge issue.

  I ended up going with a sixteen-foot sea kayak that was five years old but looked brand-new. Lana sold it to me for next to nothing. Although the boat was not the most aesthetically pleasing option, it had the longest waterline and the most capacious storage areas. It was exactly what I was looking for. On the drive home I mulled over a variety of names for my new vessel, eventually settling on “Armageddon: Chicken Edition,” Ace, for short.

  Item number 2: A cool name. Check.

  Ace was an excellent choice.

  It took me less than a minute in the ocean to reach this conclusion. She was infinitely faster and easier to paddle than my crappy old sit-on-top.

  Oahu, here I come, I thought, as I dipped my paddle in the ocean. Then, as I pulled the blade toward me, I thought, Say your prayers, you bitch chickens.

  After a few hours on the water, I rowed back in, pulled Ace ashore, loaded her onto my car, and headed back home. As soon as I arrived, I pulled the kayak off my roof and laid her down on the grass in the backyard. While she dried in the sun, I headed inside and grabbed a variety of supplies. Food, water, tent, backpack, sleeping bag, water desalinater, animal traps—all the shit I would need to kayak seventy miles, catch a shit ton of mongooses, and then kayak seventy miles back. The gear fit into my new boat with room to spare. Item numbers 3 through 3d: check, check, check, check, check.

  Pleased with the speed of my progress, I sang a little impromptu ditty as I unloaded Ace. Upon completion of the task, I went inside and opened a cider. By the time I reached the bottom of the bottle, I had devised a month-long training schedule. Item number 4, kind-of check (I had a training schedule, but I still had to actually do the training).

  After grabbing another cider from the fridge, I opened my laptop and started doing some research. Although it was slightly incriminating, I felt okay googling “mongooses” on my own computer. It wasn’t as blatantly nefarious as “smuggling.”

  A half hour later, having read five different websites, I felt confident in my ability to trap the little assassins (item numbers 6 through 6c: check).

  “Kicking ass,” I said to myself as I marked completed tasks off the list, a big smile spread across my face. I was making progress and the checklist was providing me with visual confirmation of that progress. It felt good.

  Unfortunately, that sense of accomplishment was short-lived. After drawing a line through 6c, my gaze shifted down to the next item on the list. The word “transport” brought me back down to earth in a hurry.

  “Shit,” I said to myself.

  In order to cross number 7 off the Operation Flush A Turd Checklist I would need to figure out how to transport a bunch of live carnivores across seventy miles of open ocean. “Shit” was an understatement.

  How did I scrawl that down on the list in such a cavalier fashion? I pondered. Then, shifting into a mindset of self-reproach, I thought, Jesus Christ, Ingrid, get it together. Your whole fucking plan is based on smuggling mongooses in a kayak, and you have no idea how to get mongooses into a fucking kayak. You are a dummy, just a straight up dummy.

  Having properly admonished myself, I decided to call it a day. True, I had made a huge oversight, but that didn’t change the fact that a great deal of progress had been made. I deserved to relax and enjoy my accomplishments. The transportation conundrum could wait until morning.

  Not wanting to leave incriminating evidence lying around, I opened a nearby drawer and dropped the list inside. As I closed the drawer a drop of blood fell from the tip of my nose down onto the paper landing adjacent to the uncompleted item number 7.

  Good, I thought. Added inspiration.

  I closed the drawer, grabbed a tissue from a nearby box, and shoved it up my nose. The bleeding would stop in a minute or two; I knew that it was nothing more than an inconvenience, one that I had dealt with on a routine basis ever since that rooster scared that rich kid.

  With a slight taste of iron in my mouth, I walked over to the couch and fell asleep.

  Chapter 17

  Biggie Smalls Provides a Solution

  Ethan tickling my face with a flower, that’s what woke me up the following morning. I was still on the couch, wearing sweaty clothes, breathing through bloody tissues. It took me a second to get my bearings. I hadn’t fallen asleep on a couch since my freshman year of college. It was actually a point of pride. No matter how drunk I was, I always managed to make it to my bed. Well, a bed.

  After a few seconds, I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and ran my fingers through my hair.

  “What time is it?” I asked. The skin at the side of my mouth pulled a little as I spoke, as if it had been covered in a thin layer of weak glue. I had been drooling.

  “Eleven forty, gorgeous,” Ethan said, delivering the last word in a sarcastically seductive tone. He was giving me shit for looking like shit. It was almost noon, I had been asleep for over fourteen hours, my entire body was covered in a salty combination of sweat and dried ocean water, blood-soaked tissues were sprouting from my nose, and a crusty trail of saliva ran from the corner of my lip to the base of my chin. I deserved to be teased.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I replied.

  “But if I do that, then I can’t recite all the odes to your beauty that I composed this morning.”

  “You’re the worst,” I said, smiling, shaking my head. Having gained my bearings, I stood up and walked to the kitchen to get something to drink. I dropped my bloody tissues in Ethan’s lap on the way. He laughed.

  When I arrived in the kitchen, I found Charlie standing at the counter pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  “Please, feel free to help yourself,” I said in a ton
e of faux anger.

  “I would have asked but I didn’t want to wake you up. You just looked so elegant there passed out on the couch,” he retorted.

  “You’re just as bad as Ethan,” I said in my annoyed but amused voice. “You two shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people until they’ve had their coffee.”

  As I spoke, I grabbed a mug from the shelf and held it out imploringly. Charlie filled up my cup, returned the carafe to the coffeemaker, and then walked over to the fridge. After a few seconds of vacant staring, he closed it back up.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “Milk.”

  “Nope. Don’t have any. It’s expensive, and I never use it all before it goes bad.”

  “Big mistake. Milk’s important, gives you strong bones and big muscles.”

  “Yup,” Ethan added from the living room. “Charlie’s right, milk does a body good. Maybe that’s why you’re leaking blood out your nose like a hemophiliac. It’s a lack of milk.”

  “Listen, I’m from the Midwest. Growing up I drank enough milk for ten lifetimes. My bones are like steel. There will be no osteoporosis for this lady. Also, shouldn’t we be making fun of Charlie right now? He’s the one that needs milk for his coffee like he’s a middle school girl having his first cup. Sorry, little girl,” I said, turning toward Charlie. “I don’t have any Frappuccinos for you.”

  Ethan laughed and then joined in on the shit dispensing. “That’s true. If I recall correctly, last time we went to the coffee shop he ordered a Crème Brule Latte with an extra shot of caramel. I could practically see the estrogen coming off the drink.”

  “Well that makes sense, I mean he had to keep his energy up for the sleepover. It’s tiring braiding hair and drawing hearts around pictures of boy bands,” I added, continuing to run with the Charlie-is-a-middle-school-girl shtick.

  “Yes, it is,” Charlie said, making the wise decision to self-deprecate—it’s the best way out of being teased. “Both braiding and boy band worshipping are very tiring activities. As is giving mani-pedis. If I don’t have the right combo of sugar and caffeine, my nail polishing stroke goes straight to hell.”