Henry Rifle Forums

... aren't six feet tall.

I think I have mentioned that one of Miss T's hobbies is raising a coop full of chickens. For the last few years we have had anywhere from thirty to one hundred and fifty... chickens running around during the day. Let me state up front, I don't DO chickens, I am not a chicken expert, and what I know about them... comes from overheard conversations between Tina and the "Flock."

That's what I call all the chicken folks that call to talk to Miss T, male or female. One woman called and I took the phone out to the boss. Tina asked: "Who is it?" I said: "One of the Flock." I hear the woman burst out laughing on the phone, I mean, she's dying. I say: "I'm sorry, no offense." "No, no," she said, still laughing, "It's just that's what MY husband calls all the chicken folk that call HERE."

Where was I?

Oh yeah, six feet tall. So, what I learned, was mostly by watching the flock, the actual flock. I learned what we mean by "mean old biddy" and "pecking order". The origin of the phrase "mother hen," and "cock of the walk." But it was watching the flock where I discovered that chickens are evil.

A six foot long snake crawled out to sun himself. The rooster spotted him and called his girls. A half dozen hens and the rooster KILLED the snake and the flock tore it apart and in less than a half hour there wasn't much left but scratched grass.

Before we had chickens, we had mice. A mouse, moving in daylight... is a scooby snack. I had NO idea what carnivores chickens were. I saw four chickens fight over a mouse. It wasn't pretty. We don't really have much of a mouse problem any more. Heck, one of the hens caught a smaller snake, ran from the other hens while she slurped it up like a six year old with a spaghetti noodle.

If chickens were six feet tall, they would be modern day dinosaurs. Alpha predators.
We would hunt them, with a back up. Their one failing, is they go into a trance at night.... You could find their nest and whack them with a bat...

Never seen a 6ft tall chicken, but have seen some 3 ft ones - they're called turkeys, and they can also get pretty mean when they want to....

tractortad wrote:Never seen a 6ft tall chicken, but have seen some 3 ft ones - they're called turkeys, and they can also get pretty mean when they want to....

When I was a kid, my grandmother had an evil Tom turkey, creatively named Tom. All the grandkids hated him, and were scared of him. He chased us around the yard, pecked us, and beat us with his wings. He ruled my grandmother's yard. She would yell out her kitchen window: "Ya'll leave that bird alone!"

One Thanksgiving, we went to Grandma's house for dinner. The house was packed, folding tables everywhere, for kids and adults alike. As I passed through the long serving line with my plate, my Grandmother was carving the turkey. I started to slide on by as I had pineapple baked ham, my favorite.

"No turkey for you Honey?" She asked.
"No Thank you Grammy," I said, " I showed her my plate, "I have your ham!"
"It's Tom!" She said... with a twinkle in her eye.

"I'll have a drumstick, please ma'am."

this gives me a whole new image of chickens .. .. will have to file the info away to use when my wife ask about why we need an elephant gun (45-70) .... one just never knows if/when a 6' chicken might come along .. .. I well remember my grandmother going out in her back yard, grabbing a chicken by its head, swinging it around and wringing its neck .... after they flopped around for a while, I remember her building a fire under the scaling pot and watching her pluck the feathers .... its kind of interesting to think of something like that as being a good memory ..

Where did the term playing chicken come from? Chickens aren't chicken at all.

BrokenolMarine wrote: If chickens were six feet tall, they would be modern day dinosaurs. Alpha predators.
We would hunt them, with a back up. Their one failing, is they go into a trance at night.... You could find their nest and whack them with a bat...

Actually, science now regards birds as modern day descendants of the dinosaurs and recent fossil evidence has even shown some dinosaurs to have been feathered. Also, there were some prehistoric, carnivorous birds that were over 6 feet tall. You would not want to run into one of these things when out pheasant hunting.

I guess you'd have to take a 45/70 for pheasant hunting back in those days...

tractortad wrote:I guess you'd have to take a 45/70 for pheasant hunting back in those days...

I'd most certainly take it for "pleasant" hunting ..

If the chickens tried to cross the road, a Kenworth should get the job done even if they were six feet tall.

Travlin wrote:If the chickens tried to cross the road, a Kenworth should get the job done even if they were six feet tall.

Well said. A chicken that tall might not fit in every pot. Colonel Sanders might get promoted to general if he could sell them.