The Great Big Chicken Dilemma
by Gary West
Wasn’t quite the dilemma everybody thought it was going to be.
What dilemma, you say? Don’t you watch the TV? Okay, okay—I
forgot: you don’t live round here and it didn’t
go national. Big news in our little burg, though. Seems Jimmy Barnes’
chicken coop exploded—no
explanation, last I heard—and it started raining roosters and hens
right in the middle of town.
Doesn’t sound all that bad till you realize Jimmy had the biggest
chicken coop this side of the
Mississippi—upwards of 10,000 of those squawkers. And the biggest
chickens maybe in the whole world. Heard
tell some of them went twenty pounds or more.
Anyway, you got all these chickens coming down from the sky, some of
them splatting on the ground making a
big mess, others flapping their wings half-floating half-plummeting to
earth like fat, ugly angels. A few
even landed on people’s heads—three dead at last count. People,
that is, more than a thousand dead
chickens. The rest either landed on the dead ones (cushioning their fall),
or came down in trees or on
the roofs of buildings.
Of course, that set the people in town to panicking: women screaming
(some men too), children crying, and
just about everybody running round like… well, like chickens with
their heads cut off. Except Joe Navoni.
Biggest man you ever saw: seven five and weighing near 500 pounds. And
hungry! Joe Navoni could eat
more in one sitting than most men could in ten.
Uh-huh. I see. You’re thinking Joe ate all those chickens and saved
the day. Not even close. First
off, Joe’s big but he ain’t THAT big. Remember, there were
approximately 10,000 birds littering the streets;
times that by an average of say 15-16 pounds each and you got yourself
well…a heck of a lot of chicken meat.
And there ain’t a man nor beast alive can eat that much chicken.
I guarantee it.
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What Joe did was go into the local John Deere store where he worked—rummaged around awhile, by the sounds of it—and came out with the biggest upright vacuum cleaner you ever laid eyes on. Thing was bigger than a tractor, with handle bars set about halfway down so Joe could push it without much trouble. The mouth of the thing was this big gaping maw that looked a lot like the front end of a hay baler, rotating teeth and auger helping to pick up what the suction couldn’t get. Which wasn’t much.
Needless to say, Joe went around sucking up those chickens—dead
and alive; and one little old lady that
got in the way—in record time, stopping only to empty the bag—maybe
every 200-300 pounds. And with that,
big Joe Navoni became a hero; at least here in Podunkville.
And later, while he was accepting the key to the city and someone asked
him where he’d gotten such a big
vacuum, Joe said plainly: "Made it" Then: "Always thought
sumthin’ like this might happen. Ain’t never
trusted chickens much, always struttin’ round squawkin’ like
they’s better‘n most." People, that is.