Monday, July 12, 2004

Booze Chick A Booze


When the dark clouds contort in the moonless sky and the wind sinks its teeth into the valley like a cheap fish taco from the local "roach coach" taqueria van (mild salsa, thank you very much) and the ground seizes and contracts, tensing like it has just realized that they not only put the hot salsa on the fish taco, they tossed in some habanero peppers because of your jackass "Jose, Jorge, same difference" comment and now the wind begins whipping the normally placid aqueduct into an undulating whirlpool as it gulps down gallons in a desperate attempt to cool and counteract the effects of the fiery feast... that is when the drunken chicken prowls.

The drunken chicken's gurgled clucking cracks the cold calm that surrounds the soundless town. The shopowners' doors swing shut and torches are doused as the civilians sink deeper into silence save the distant, uncontrollable sobbing of a few sensitive youths. The increasingly belligerent begawking is followed by a fierce crinkling clatter that can only be the sound of a hammered hen pecking feverishly at a package of beer nuts. And not far behind that, the snap of that plastic bag breaking open for to let spring its tasty seed that scurry down the stone-paved street like wee termite inmates making with the jailbreak from the pest control pokey. The flagrant fowl futily bangs its beak between the cracks of the cobblestone square in search of a solitary coated comestible. After hours of artless and saucy squawking, the rogue Rhode Island Red waddles wobbly into its henhouse solidly soused and stinking of Stoli from claws to comb. Her fine-feathered pen peers avert their gaze from the glazed-over and well-pickled poultry as she struts and stumbles toward her nest.

The morning brings a metamorphosis to the monster that stalked the streets only hours earlier. Without the benefit of Hyde-side or the recollection of her erratic evening episode, she strides out onto the range with Jeckyllesque jocularity, joyful and drinkfree. Grazing gleefully in the unfermented grain. Unaware of the wary square-dwellers currently collecting unclaimed beer nuts and free floating feathers. Reminders of the rampage, talismans of the terror, hallmarks of the havoc visited upon them by the vision of the drunken chicken.

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