Jan 15, 2024–If chickens didn’t exist, Elon Musk would have to invent them.
Think about it. Chickens are the Swiss Army knives of the food pantry.
Imagine the discussion around the table at The Creator’s Create-A-Creature Corporation.
“OK, team. The boss wants us to come up with some type of magical food source that can live anywhere on the planet, subsists on scraps, is easy to domesticate, is small enough for children to handle, yet substantial enough to feed the masses, and is completely portable.”
“What about a tiny dinosaur?” asked Mel in Marketing. “We already have the prototype in development. And with a little tinkering from Research we could get them down to the size of a mini-van.”
Product development pushed back: “Not small enough. A crate of them needs to fit inside a covered wagon.”
Ideas swirled around the conference table:
“It would also be great if we could use its covering to stuff pillows…”
“And make writing pens so we can draft documents…”
“It should both walk and fly, so it could migrate around the world…”
That’s when Fran in Accounting raised her hand.
“With all due respect, there is a flaw in this plan. Even if we can re-imagine this creature down to the size of, say, a toaster, on a long trip you would eventually eat them all up and there would be no food left.”
Silence. Then a guy in Research spoke up.
“I’ve got it. Why not have these creatures produce some type of ovoid nugget, that comes in its own preservative package and they can push out daily! They could be eaten as is, or pop out another creature. It would literally be a Perpetual Food Source!”
Heads nodded.
“And what if it had a built-in alarm clock to wake us before dawn? Wouldn’t that be sweet?”
The boss stood up. “I like it. But let’s only give half of them the alarm clock function, so we can sell it as an upgrade. Now get busy.”
We give you… The Chicken.
I wonder how the history of human settlement would have been different if chickens didn’t exist. Would ships have crossed the ocean? Would explorers have risked setting out on the Oregon Trail?
I wonder if astronauts will take hens to Mars? How appropriate that birds descended from creatures wiped out by an asteroid would help settle another planet.
Chickens also serve as natural pest control. They thrive on pesky grasshoppers, worms, scorpions, spiders, and snakes. If we need to feed them, we use literal chicken scratch. We even recycle their waste as fertilizer.
As for eating them… like Al Capp’s Schmoo, their meat is magical. Out of one beast, you an enjoy white meat, dark meat, meat on a stick (the leg), and meat on little sticks (wings). It can be boiled, broiled, fried, baked, barbecued, or basted.
Chickens are the most eaten animals on the planet. The fast-food industry would collapse if chickens didn’t exist.
We even consume their internal organs–chicken livers and gizzards–and whatever is left is ground up in hot dogs. Some cultures eat their feet.
What about their medical properties? Is there any better medicine than chicken soup?
Interestingly, chicken transcends all cultural bias and all world religions. Everyone can eat chicken. Even vegetarians can enjoy an egg, which can be boiled, fried, coddled, scrambled, shirred, whipped into meringues and mayos, painted into wet plaster, or swallowed raw as in Rocky.
No one has found the true path to world peace, nutritional nirvana, or resource sustainability. But I won’t be surprised that it tastes like chicken.
XXX
Phil Houseal writes and raises chickens. www.FullHousePR.com.