Then I babysat some chickens. Now I’ve seen stupid.
So I’m trying to put the ladies to bed for the evening, right? Because it’s four o’clock, and even though it’s uncommonly mild for late November it’s going to get cold fast and I don’t want to be out futzing with chickens when it does.
And the chickens are having none of it. They absolutely do not want to go into their coop, and are practically committing sepukku on the fence wire to prevent it.
So I take the pan of fried rice leavings and greens I’d saved for them, and pitch them into the coop. Usually I give it to them after they’re in, but this time I’m using it as incentive. And at first they ignore it, but finally one goes to check it out and right away she’s in chicken nirvana. Here’s a pile of people food, and only one chicken to enjoy it.
Of course the other two see this through the wire, right? And I’m expecting a stampede through the door they had previously avoided like slow painful death.
Except neither can make the mental leap that one enters the coop and arrives at the lovely pile of food by rounding the corner and going through the big open door. And so they start raising hell and throwing themselves at the wire, trying to batter their way through the SIDE of the coop. It actually take three or four minutes – I was watching – before one works this out, by which time there’s only about half a pile of food. The third sees what the second has done, and from then there’s no problem.
Chickens, like cattle, must have been bred to be this stupid. There’s no other explanation. Otherwise they could never have survived as a species without human intervention. They really ought to be allowed to vote – they’ve got the aptitude.
I’m an election official in WI so I can tell you with confidence: Your chickens are over-qualified.
They did vote in large numbers in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In fact they voted many times thanks to the DOJ success in preventing voter ID laws. In 2008 a friend volunteered to drive people to the polls in Sacramento. We don’t even live in California. Anyway he goes down their for a week and gets trained and does his volunteer work and comes back to tell me all about it. He had this van and he would drive to specific locations to meet another volunteer who would put half a dozen homeless people and drunks into the van. Then he gave each of them a little card with their “new” name on it and a facsimile of the ballot with only the names of the Democrats they were to vote for. 30 or 40 things on the ballot and only 5 votes on this card. President, Senator, Representative, governor and secretary of state. Then he drove them to a polling place on his list and let them out to vote. When they were done he would drive them to the next polling place and give them another card with their “new” voter name on it and these same five people to vote for. He would do this for about 6-8 polling places following his instructions each time and then he would return these people to the place he got them and watch the other volunteer pay them off and often give them a pint as well. He said the other volunteer would ask him each time if they had gone to each place and each “voter” had voted. And he said all the “voters” in his van would be hanging on each word because they had been told to cooperate fully or they got nothing. He did this for three days 8-12 hours a day and said that his groups were probably responsible for over 500 votes in those three days and he knew of at least 50 other volunteers who had been trained with him. He didn’t volunteer this year, not because he suddenly became honest I bet but somehow I think he has become quite disappointed in Obama. However I bet he held his nose and voted for Obama because I think he actually believes if he votes Republican that the world will end and the rivers will become polluted, etc.