Don't Be Chicken

I’m not very brave. I am pretty certain that someday shortly after I have passed on, a pathologist standing in a cold room reeking of antiseptic is going to make the nice tidy Y-incision that is the start of my autopsy. And the first thing he is going to pull out is a chicken. And it won’t be because I died of bird flu.

How is it that chickens came to be the poster animal for fear? Well, have you ever looked into the eyes of a chicken? They don’t exactly look scared. And why would they be? They always hang around in gangs – a lone chicken is a completely unknown entity. When was the last time you saw a chicken by itself? Never, that’s right. You are just never going to see a solitary chicken standing at a corner waiting for the traffic light to change. They simply do not go out alone in public. So what do they have to be afraid of? Nothing, absolutely nothing! The idea of the scared chicken is in our heads, not theirs.

Consider the life of the typical chicken. It’s pretty easy, since virtually all chickens are typical. There has never been an exceptional chicken, none has ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, but I think one or two might have been in the running for the Pulitzer. Each chicken revels in being the same as every other chicken; it is the modus operandi of all chickens. It is the finest example of peer pressure, encoded at the level of the DNA.

Chickens the world over do pretty much the same thing every day. There is a lot of hanging around in hen houses, lots of clucking about nothing, a bit of pecking on a neighbor, and of course, the ever-popular egg laying. Apart from the egg-laying thing, it’s not so different from the typical day of the average human being.

There is no sense in debating the lore over which came first – the chicken or the egg – it is the inseparable chicken-egg unit that counts. It is the mission of a chicken to lays eggs, and it is the mission of an egg to produce an egg-laying chicken. How perfect is that? Of course, roosters don’t lay eggs, but they do play some nebulous role that has to do with egg-laying. No one can seem to explain it in plain terms. One person will tell you that it is the mere presence of the rooster that keeps the egg production sailing along; another will tell you that he has a more personal role to play. I think it’s better not to pry into the details. The hens and the roosters have it all sorted out. It’s really none of our business.

I think we blundered when we started to equate being afraid with being chicken. Chickens all live in hen houses, or sunny barnyards, or nasty factories. Foxes and chicken hawks are rare, except in cartoons, and chickens lack the brain power to ponder their fate. If you don’t know you are delicious, you won’t worry about where that might lead. If someone takes your eggs, and you know there are plenty more where that came from, it’s not going to keep you awake at night in anguished worry. If someone sets your food at your feet, and bothers with the task of cleaning up after you, why worry? You are either a chicken or a teenager – either way you’ve got it made.

Since chickens have obviously quit quaking in their boots, we need to find a new symbol for fear. Maybe spiders would do. Have you noticed that they seem pretty fearful? The minute they spot you they run like mad. They are so fear-crazed they can’t even trot off in a straight line. They zigzag and bob in a spittled frenzy on their way to nowhere, adrenaline and legs pumping. Now if that’s not the definition of fear, what is?