You’ll remember that Rhode Island Red and her flock were alleged to have decreed at an awfully loud hen party, “If you’re funny… than you must be gay!” a gathering that the entire park could hear.
Well, folks had a long discussion about the inappropriateness of the comment combined with the loudness of the Cluckfest... and the overt loudness was bothersome as the flock was much noisier than usual.
And distinctly so.
Leading us to ask was the comment “If you’re funny… than you must be gay!” an actual belief of the flock? Or did they have something else in mind. Were they trying to offend someone they thought to be in hearing distance of their loud cackles? A slur perhaps? Maybe they were trying to provoke a response or engineer a specific action from someone they thought could overhear them?
That’s three possibilities.
Now if you discard any belief the flock has in the “If you’re funny… than you must be gay!” salvo. And you recall that Rhode Island Red has a homosexual relation (and so the flock has no overt prejudices) then that leaves only one possibility, that the flock wanted to be overheard (hence the exceptional loudness). They wanted to engender a specific response or action from someone. But if that’s true, who specifically and what specific action the chickens wanted to engineer… well… that can only be guessed at.
Why can that only be guessed at?
Because you can’t talk to chickens. And this is not about the difficulties regarding the translation of a chicken’s mindless clucks to English (or any other language). It’s much more scientific than that. However being unfamiliar with the behaviors of chickens a copy of Hamilton Hickman’s ‘Abnormal Behaviors in Domesticated Fowl’ was obtained (but not from the Fernbrook Resort library – if they ever had a copy some chicken probably borrowed it. Permanently. [See a previous blog entry http://fernbrookresort.blogspot.ca/2014/07/fernwood-resort-freelton-confirms-that.html for a chicken’s definition of borrow])
Getting back to Abnormal Behaviors in Domesticated Fowl, Hickman notes that the very largest members of the chicken family (who are most often found domesticated and wingless) are one of God’s most unusual creatures and that, while having a spine, unusually, they possess no backbone.
Moreover large or big chickens firmly believe that as long as they’re pretendingly polite to the face – that they can say and do whatever they want (prevaricate, fling dog feces, etc.) when that same face is turned away.
Furthermore, any object of a big chicken’s scorn is not allowed to get upset. Or retaliate. Why? Because (citing the Eastern Mud Hen Inference) they’ve always been polite to your face. And for the rightfully offended to take offense would be offensive… to the big chicken. A double standard for sure. But if you reread your Abnormal Behaviors text you will note that the double standard is a trait common to chickens. As is denial. Confront a big chicken about something stupid that they’ve clucked and they’ll deny they ever said the clucking thing.
Finally Hamilton Hickman teaches us that not all chickens are of the appearance that convention expects (feathers, beaks etc. etc.) and that some chickens can be quite human in appearance, lacking wings and possessing features such as noses, hair and fingers. Hickman doesn’t comment on this but I guess that’s where chicken fingers come from.
Abnormal Behaviors in Domesticated Fowl by Hamilton Hickman is a great way to become acquainted with the various mannerisms of most tamed bird species (but especially chickens) and is a highly recommended research tool. By both veterinarians and psychologists.
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