Well, the olive branch of peace may have been defoliated by one of the chickens at Fernbrook Resort in Freelton, Ontario. If so, war, which wasn’t even on the menu just a scant few days ago, is on the table and ready to be served. Piping hot.
And though I want to be mad, I can’t be.
Because to be upset would mean that the guilty chickens were reading this blog and decided that ‘war’ isn’t over until they cluck that it’s over.
They can’t be that feather-brained.
So they’re not reading this.
Which means Rooster isn’t receiving meds for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The residents are unaware that their private library is being pilfered. The Noxema Girls at reception don’t know that they’ve been complimented on their beauty. Lapchicken is unaware that he’s being svengalied (technically that’s not a real word but you know what I mean). And so on down the line.
What happened to bring about the possibility of war?
My mother always said that I was born wearing skates but I prefer to say that I was born riding a bike. Either way that’s a hell of a difficult birth and hats off to Mom’s everywhere for giving birth to kids wearing any sort of sporting equipment. Or just for having kids. Anyway, just about any thing that could wrong with a bike I have experienced. And survived. Broken chains, cracked rims, exploding brakes, I’ve even broken a bike frame in half.
This past week however it was something new.
I get on the bike and immediately I noticed that the handlebar was loose and that the handbrake pulls were pointed up in the air. I grabbed an allan key, repositioned the bars and went on my way. I didn’t think anything of it. One of those things that happens I supposed.
Two days later (the day after the olive branch was proffered) the exact same thing – I walked out into the shed, handlebar loose, brake levers up etc. etc. I just figured that I hadn’t tightened it quite enough. So I re-tightened it and went on my way.
This morning it was the same thing. So I tightened it up once more… and while I was tightening I got to thinking. Why would the brake pulls be pointing up in the air? If the handlebar became loose they should point toward the earth. Shouldn’t they? Because of their weight. For those of you familiar with the eccentricities of gravity and gravitational pull this will make perfect sense to you.
It would be nice to be certain that it was just a accident. But even now I’m not 100% convinced that it's not just a coincidence. My questions then:
Had I done a bad repair job? (Two in fact)
Was the three times loose handlebar just coincidence?
Was some chicken playing an underwinged trick?
Were aliens involved?
I tackled the alien angle first and, using the internet to research and according to enquiring minds, aliens occupy themselves with crop circles, disemboweling cows and random probing of various human orifices. I don’t have cows or crops and I hope you’ll take my word for it when I tell you I haven’t been probed. At least I don’t think I have. I guess they drug you or something. It’s all kind of hazy. Anyway absolutely nothing about handlebar loosening.
Could I have done a bad repair job? Twice. I don’t know but, yeah… it’s possible.
Coincidence? The thing is, coincidences don’t come in threes. That’s why they’re called coincidences. Singular one-time events. So it just couldn’t have been a coincidence. Could it?
Which leaves the idea that perhaps some featherbrained chicken wanted to irritate me but not hurt me. Or, if I did get hurt, they could think, well, if he didn’t see the handlebar was loose by the brake levers pointing up then it was his own fault. And so a salve for their conscience if a couple of eggs err… legs… got broken.
So any data I have on the causation of the loose handlebars is purely empirical at this point. I have nothing hard to base a hard conclusion on.
But if I did?
And the cause of the handlebar loosening did turn out to be fowl related?
I would issue an official Declaration of War on all chickens and chickenkind of Fernbrook Resort. If chickens are tossing lit cigarettes around the property and loosening handlebar bolts on bicycles and… and… well… then it’s time to stop being tolerant. The fuse is lit. And I’m sure that I would have the support of the late Colonel Harland Sanders for this military action. Sanders of course is known to have hated chickens so much that he fried every last one of them – in a style that the Geneva Convention now bans – and known as the horrible Kentucky Fried torture.
But I would not fight like a chicken.
I would not lie, I would not gossip and I would not attempt to damage or to cause personal injury to any chicken, chickenkind or their property. When I indicated previously that being mean ate away at my insides like acid – I meant it. I would lose sleep. And I will not lose sleep over this. So, instead, I would use federal law, municipal bylaws and provincial statutes to extract order. If I’m wrong? There will be no foul. And if I’m right… there will be no fowl.
And for those who get bored reading blogs they can simply tune into CNN for all the latest news and developments. CNN being the Chicken News Network.
Cock-a-doodle-stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment