Barnyard birds get into trouble. The trouble farmer gets them out. Today, ten birds crowded the small isolation coop meant for the six gift hens given by the neighbors. Six buxom buff orpingtons joined four golden sex-links. Golden girls. Farmer Drew Goode knew not how they got into this once-thought-secure coop. And those golden girls didn’t know how to get out. No matter how they cooed and cackled the gateway to freedom did not open. No matter their pained pleas, the resident rooster didn’t come to the ready rescue. The harried hens knew how to get into trouble. But they couldn’t, never could, never will figure a way out.
It isn’t that all blondes are dumb, not even in the chicken world. But at least these blondes, the golden sex-link hens, have an excuse. Their brain size compares to a dime, though they have slightly more sense. Early in the week, the fatigued farmer saw Tom turkey roaming outside the turkey trot fence. Not a complete shock. When all of the turkeys were younger and more svelte, they were constantly escaping the four foot fencing, flying sometimes thirty feet in the air. With age and sage, they stuck to the muck of their enclosure, occasionally escape escapades tolerated. This rare bird broach by big bird required human intervention (open the gate, kick the bird towards it while fending on the guardian dogs). Soon secured, Tom said nothing about how or why he sought trouble. The dumb animal, somewhere in his little bird brain, got high on the rescue.
Birds aren’t the only creatures that can’t find their way out of a paper bag, let alone a cardboard box. Not to labor the dumb blonde sex-links, but one of these cuties found her way into a discarded cardboard box the other day. Old Goode two-shoes heard some strange clatter as he pronounced his morning chicken chores of fooding and watering. Thud-scratch-clat-clat-clat! What could it be? A little silence and focus led dense Drew to the chicken size box on the nearby bench. Sure enough, the terror to all head-first-entering beasts – a door that opens to the inside. Once the chicken pushed into the box to see if there was anything to eat – it became a trap – and escape could only be accomplished by a reluctant benefactor. Benefactors, though only appreciated at the point of rescue, benefit us all at one time or another in our recurring dead-ends in life.
The moral to the story might be that birdbrains and geniuses both find their way into trouble. Without a benefactor, one might get stuck. Without luck, one might succumb to a bad actor. Sometimes one has claw their way out. Other times one must stay and fight and adapt to the new environment.