Film Oddities

Whack Job #1:
Myrtle lives in West Palm Beach, Florida. A few years ago she met her soul mate, “Cotton.” Cotton is a chicken. But not just any chicken. He is a Japanese Cotton Chicken. He sits at the table for meals. He even eats Big Macs. Myrtle made him red satin diapers with removable cloth liners so he doesn’t have the shame of uncontrollably shitting all over the house. Cotton’s feathers are silky and fluffy like a baby birds and extend all the way down to his claws.

Yes, I have seen a chicken with hairy feet. It is an unsettling sight (not to mention the way she kisses him, and how her red dress matches his diapers).

Whack Job #2:
Robin is a chicken lover. He says, “I’d be honored the day someone calls me chicken.” He knows how to do the mating dance. He roots around in his back yard, blue denim overalls like makeshift feathers, clucking and clawing at the dirt with his companions. Robin can even crow like a rooster. His imitation is eerily precise. But he doesn’t have tail feathers, and no matter how hard he tries, Robin will never lay eggs.

Yes, I have seen a man aspire to become an animal that pecks for food in piles of its own excrement.

Whack Job #3:
Bethany never thought she’d be famous. But then again, she hadn’t met Valerie the hen when she thought that. One cold winter night in Maine, Bethany called her hens in to roost. “Here chic chics, here chic chics,” she cried. They clucked and waddled their way home god speed, except for hen number seven (later named Valerie, as in valor).

Long story short, poor hen number seven had hypothermia and was frozen under the rickety yellow pine porch and Bethany’s dog had to haul her out. After three hours of mouth-to-beak resuscitation, the chic was saved and Bethany was on a fast track to fame. Live interviews were even broadcast in Russia, Nepal, and Moscow.

Moral of the stories?

The PBS film A Natural History of the Chicken says more about chicken owners than it does the little cluck-clucks themselves.