Chickey in the Straw

Another Fallon Story...

When we first moved to Fallon, we lived out on the ranch of some friends of mom's, Maryann and Dave. She had gone to junior high school with Maryann and they've been friends ever since. The ranch was 140 acres, mostly alfalfa, about 8 miles northwest of town.

Anyway, one thing the feed stores out in the rural (and not so rural) areas used to do is sell you a bag of feed and 50 fertilized eggs which you could then incubate, hatch and raise chickens to then sell and make a little dough.

So Maryann and Dave managed to cull 12 grown chickens from the bunch. They were free range, meaning Dave never got around to throwing up some chickenwire to keep them contained. It was kind of cute having all those chickens wandering about.

There was one problem. You know the old saying, "Slick as chickenshit." Well, there's a reason for that saying. And they crapped everywhere. Everywhere.

One day Maryann came out the back door, planted her foot on the patio and *schwoop* fell flat on 'er arse.

That was it. "Dave," she said, "I want these chicken butchered and frozen. I can't stand this no more." Or somesuch.

So Dave gathered up one of the illegals (they had a not-nicer name for them then, of course) living on the ranch and they spent the afternoon gathering up the 12 chickens. To keep them from running off, they used a narrow rope to tie each one down, about two feet apart, by its right leg, like a little chain gang.

Well, the two of them got two chickens butchered and plucked and ready for freezing, but it's a time consuming task and it was quite late by the time they did all that. They decided that rather than spend half the day rounding the others back up they'd just leave the chain gang where it was and finish them off in the AM.

Sun comes up and out they go. The rope is still there. Every two feet there's a knot, and in each of the ten knots, there's a yellow chicken leg.

But that's all. No chickens. Just ten little legs stuck in the knots, lying there on the ground. Dave was about to curse the coyotes, but the rope was just outside the house and they hadn't heard a thing in the night. So he looked around and what did he see?

Chickens. One-legged chickens, hopping about the yard, like everything was normal and they'd never had a second leg. He called Maryann out, who couldn't believe her eyes either.

She felt very guilty, and very bad for the one-legged chickens, so much so that she couldn't bear to let Dave butcher any more of them.

And that's how the Hernandez Ranch got a whole flock of One-Legged Chickens.