Posted on 07/04/2005 9:38:36 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Why did the chicken cross the bench?
To win the Poultry Olympics, of course.
In keeping with a four-year tradition, a flock of feathered friends - along with their young 4-H Club owners - showed up at the Stoughton Fair on Sunday morning to demonstrate their avian athleticism. If you can call it that.
No pullets were asked to toss a javelin or play a round of water polo. All the birds had to do was walk a straight-ish line and devour a few corn kernels.
In contrast, their pint-sized handlers faced most of the day's zany challenges, enduring events like a backward- facing egg toss and the high speed "Three-Legged Cage Set-Up Relay."
Despite the kids' one-handed "Separate the Yolk from the White" contest, everyone proved to be a good egg.
"She's my friendliest chicken," Evan Hale, 10, of Brooklyn explained about Cutie, his Old English B.B. game bantam who won a three-way tie in "Walking the Line," in which poultry in show-stopping, gleaming plumage were asked to parade to the end of a wooden bench without flapping down to the soft sawdust floor below. Handlers were allowed to encourage, but not touch, the birds as they followed their beaks down the bench.
"You can cheer on your favorite chicken!" Elizabeth Breuer, co-superintendent of the fair's poultry barn told the 75 parents and friends who opted to watch the clucker competition instead of the roaring tractor pull just a grandstand away.
Fifty-five youngsters showed their spectacular broilers, roosters, game hens, turkeys and like-feathered fowl at this year's six-day fair, which regularly attracts 45,000 visitors for livestock competitions, carnival rides, deep-fried treats and other traditional rural Americana.
The Poultry Olympics is meant to provide some non- competitive fun for 4-Hers (they all win a door prize) as the fair winds down, said poultry barn co-superintendent Sue McGuigan. More than a dozen children, bobbing-headed birds in hand, showed up for the corn-eating event, in which humans were asked to kneel at a table and gobble candy corn from a plate, then set their birds on the floor near some dried grain to see which team could gobble fastest.
Past Poultry Olympics included a chicken-hypnotizing event, but it was discontinued, Breuer said - perhaps for obvious reasons.
Some birds "are pretty flighty," Evan Hale later explained. "They have a brain the size of half of a pea."
Sometimes, however, a cool head wins out over smarts. Evan's brother Tyler, 13, selected his Americana mix named Quail to compete in the bench-walk "because she's laid-back," he said.
Maybe too laid back. When Quail started to bawk - er, balk - Tyler blew on the bird and tried to guide her down the track using his hands. "Whatever I could to get her to move," he said, "because she's so lazy."
Thanks for the reminder! I forgot how cute "Chicken Run" was. Mom & I watched it one evening when the menfolk went to a Game Feed. When they got home, we made them watch it with us again, it was that good.
Of course, I'd listen to Mel Gibson read the phone book, LOL!
"This Ain't No Chick Flick!"
Winner is donated to the local Chick-Fil-A to be made into a juicy chicken sandwich for my personal consumption.
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