Chicken Fluff Balls for the Soul
Over the years, my respect for chickens has really grown. I used to think they were dimwitted creatures that poop everywhere. Then I realized I shovel their poop, so who’s the dimwitted one? Also in their favor, chickens have leaned heavily into feathers, which seems like a smart collective decision as a species–just think how much time they save doing laundry, plus all the money they save on clothes.
Meanwhile, we humans are at each other’s throats, trying to figure out how much we want to tax each other for manufacturing a pair of blue jeans. I’m pretty sure chickens haven’t read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (let’s be honest, how many humans have either–it’s 700 pages with no pictures), but chickens, it seems to me, have a better economic theory of the case; indeed, “bock, bockity, bock, bock, ba” makes more sense to me than anything I have ever heard on CNBC. Life tip: if you are ever in need of a moment of mirth, the next time you see some expert on CNBC bloviating incomprehensibly, picture them in a chicken suit saying “bock, bockity, bock, bock, ba.” You still won’t comprehend them, but it will make you smile.
Smiling is what I primarily use chickens for these days. Eggs–meh, who needs them–you can buy those at the grocery store. But what you can’t buy at the grocery store is smiles. Fluffy baby chicks equal smiles. It’s been scientifically proven that if you try not to smile at a fluffy baby chick your soul will implode.
Maybe that’s why I have so many chickens now because I need something to smile about, and at this point, I think we’d all be better off gazing at fluff balls than the TV.
All I know is that baby chicks make me smile.
(P.S. Call me crazy, but I believe that our recent egg shortage was contrived. My theory is that table eggs were being diverted and exported as hatching eggs to Finland, so the Fins could sit around and gaze at baby chicks, which is the only logical reason that such a cold and arctic country could be the happiest country in the world. Maybe that, or gazing at baby penguins (wait, are penguins Arctic or Antarctic?). The point here is there is no logical reason (like good healthcare, work-life balance, or functioning multi-party political system) why Finland should be the happiest place on earth when America invented Disney World.)
