ME: The five-foot-tall one was three hundred dollars, marked down to a hundred. That’s like two hundred dollars’ worth of chicken for free.
LAURA: You’d be crazy not to buy that. I mean, look at it. IT’S FULL OF WHIMSY.
ME: Victor’d be pissed.
LAURA: Yup.
ME: But on the plus side? It’s not towels.
LAURA: Yup.
ME: We will name him Henry. Or Charlie. Or O’Shaughnessy.
Insert inappropriate cock joke here.
LAURA: Or Beyoncé.
ME: Or Beyoncé. Yes. And when our friends are sad we can leave him at their front door to cheer them up.
LAURA: Exactly. It’ll be like, “You thought yesterday was bad? Well, now you have an enormous metal chicken to deal with. Perspective. Now you have it.”
Then we flagged down a salesman, and we were all, “What can you tell us about these chickens?” as if we were in an art gallery, and not in a store that specializes in last year’s bath mats. He didn’t know anything about them, but he said that they’d sold only one and it was to a really drunk lady, and then Laura and I were all, “SOLD. All this chicken belongs to us now.”
So he loaded it onto a trolley, but Beyoncé was surprisingly unstable, and the giant five-foot metal chicken crashed over onto the floor. And Laura and I were all, “CHICKEN DOWN! CLEANUP IN AISLE THREE,” but he didn’t laugh. Then the manager came to see what was causing all the commotion, and that’s when he found the very conservative salesman unhappily struggling to right an enthusiastically pointy chicken that was almost as tall as he was. The salesman was having a hard time, and he told everyone to stand back “because this chicken will cut you,” and at first I thought he meant it as a threat, like “That chicken has a shiv,” but turns out he just meant that all the chickens’ ends were sharp and rusty. It was awesome, and Laura and I agreed that even if we got tetanus, this chicken had already paid for itself even before we got it in her truck.
Then we got to my house and quietly snuck the chicken up to my front door, rang the doorbell, and hid around the corner.
“Knock-knock, motherfucker.”
Victor opened the door and looked at the chicken in stunned silence for about three seconds. Then he sighed, closed the door, and walked away.
LAURA: What the fuck? That’s it? That’s the only reaction we get?
ME: That’s it. He’s a hard man to rattle.
Victor was surprisingly pissed that I’d “wasted money” on an enormous chicken, because apparently he couldn’t appreciate the hysterical value of a five-foot chicken ringing the doorbell. Then I said, “Well, at least it’s not towels,” and apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because that was when Victor screamed and stormed off, but I knew he was locked in his office, because I could hear him punching things in there. Then I yelled through his door, “It’s an anniversary gift for you, asshole. Two whole weeks early. FIFTEEN YEARS IS BIG METAL CHICKENS.”
Then he yelled that he wanted it gone, but I couldn’t move it myself, so instead I said okay and went to watch TV. Then when the UPS guy came I hid, but he was all, “Dude. Nice chicken,” and Victor yelled, “IT IS NOT A NICE CHICKEN.” Which was probably very confusing to the UPS guy, who was just trying to be polite, Victor. Victor seemed more disgruntled than usual, so I finally dragged the chicken into the backyard and wedged it into a clump of trees so that it could scare the snakes away. Then I came in and Victor angrily pulled me into his office so that I could see that I’d stationed Beyoncé directly in front of his only window. And I was all, “Exactly. YOU’RE WELCOME.” I told him that he could move Beyoncé if he wanted to, but he totally hasn’t. Probably because of all of the giant rocks I piled on Beyoncé’s feet to dissuade burglars. Or possibly because Beyoncé is growing on him. Still, I can’t help thinking that we wouldn’t even be having this argument if Beyoncé was towels. Honestly, this whole chicken is really a lesson in picking your battles more carefully. Plus, he’s awesome and I can’t stop giggling every time I look at him. Beyoncé, that is.
Best. Fifteenth anniversary. Ever.
Hairless Rats: Free for Kids Only
This morning Victor and I followed our usual routine. We got up, drove Hailey to kindergarten, and stopped into the local gas station for coffee and local gossip. On the way out we stopped in front of the public bulletin board that serves as our small town’s newspaper. It’s always filled with invitations to neighborhood barbecues, and ads selling broken tractor parts or requesting clean dirt (which seems like an oxymoron), but today we found that the same person who had fascinated us with bizarre ads last year was back. They were the kind of ads that made you question exactly what was going on in his home, and also your own sanity. They were ads like:
“FLYING SQUIRRELS: CHEAP. FREE DELIVERY.”
A month later that ad was replaced by another: