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 Geriatric Chickens
by Bruce Gardner
The best thing about a newspaper is the classified section. One never knows what you might find there. Being a betting man, I’ll bet you looked through the want ads before you turned to less important things, like reading this column. Truth to tell, so did I. Just yesterday I was handed a copy of an ad that displayed a photograph of a kitten along side a photograph of a handsome young man. The heading over these photographs said Free to Good Home, Take Your Pick and the caption next to each photograph gave a concise description of each. The text at the bottom of the ad explained that the handsome young man had told his wife, “Either that kitten goes or I go.” Wifey had taken his words to heart and placed the ad.
An ad in last week’s paper extolling the virtues of a give-away rooster reminded me of one of my wife’s better ads. Chickens just naturally make good ad copy. We had begun raising chickens long before moving to our farm and had a good-sized flock that moved to the farm with us. Early on in our flock tending my wife had developed an interest in these critters and had assumed the role of primary care giver. No bunch of chickens led a more pampered life. Their water was always clean, food was always available, and the nest boxes were filled with clean straw.
Over the course of three or four years we did not raise new chicks as replacements for the aging flock. The chicken population steadily dwindled through losses to the cook pot, a marauding fox, and old age. When the flock shrank in number to a dozen or so aging biddies, my wife decided it was time for them to go.
As it was now winter and the thought of butchering chickens in the cold was not appealing, we decided to sell these old hens. We discussed at length how best to market the scraggly bunch. We looked over the flock to see what attributes they possessed that would make for an appealing ad. Feathers were missing in various places and the feathers that remained no longer shown with the rich mahogany of their youth. The skin tone on their legs was a deep yellow, telling any experienced keeper of chickens that these hens were wasting no energy on the production of eggs. In fact, it had been quite a while since any of these gals had proudly cackled over a fresh egg. Knowing, however, that there would be someone who would see value in even this motley crew, my wife decided to convert a serious shortcoming into a marketable asset. She ran a one-day ad that simply said Geriatric Chickens. Two Dollars Each.
The day the ad was published began as any other day on the farm. There was firewood to split, meals to be cooked, and chores at the barn to attend to. But the incessant ring of the telephone constantly interrupted these tasks. Folks called us from as far away as the next county to inquire about our geriatric chickens. Some callers were so tickled that they could not speak for laughing. Some respondents demanded to know what color and body type these geriatric chickens possessed. Some wanted to know if we had a rooster among the hens so that they could raise successive generations of these unique birds. Amidst all this excitement we had nothing less than a long distance bidding war for these precious pets. Our ready answer to the would-be purchaser was, “The first lucky buyer who shows up with the cash will be the lucky new owner.” We could almost hear the stock cars being pushed from barns in the neighboring communities and fired up for a quick run for the prize.
The first taker arrived with gunnysacks in hand. Upon seeing his new flock, he looked shocked at just how ugly these geriatric chickens were. He asked how old they were and we honestly replied that they were approaching Guinness record status. The true date of their hatching was lost to memory. Satisfied, our happy buyer handed over his two bucks per bird, buying the whole flock, and retreated to wherever he had come from—financially poorer but infinitely richer in the knowledge that he, and he alone, now possessed quite possibly the only flock of Geriatric Chickens in the country.
One never knows what wonderful prize awaits the careful reader of the daily want ads.
I'll be seeing you out there.
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