Chicken Lips

Hurry up! 

It was Saturday morning and the chickens were arising,

Feathers ruffled and beaks slapped with bright- 

Croissant,

 NO, 

Crescent, 

NO

Cerulean?

Certainly not, 

Oh! the word is- 

CRIMSON 

red lipstick 

Because these chickens were ready 

And they were ready to party. 

They had been planning this trip since the beginning of time, whether that meant they were first chickens or first eggs, mind you, and the day was finally, brilliantly and beautifully here. What good was sitting alone in the chicken coop when there was a world awaiting them?

The geese went away for the winter, 

SO 

Why not the chickens?

There were three of them, see. 

The one with two feet was Lola and she sat at the far right of the coop. She was the queen. She ruled the land with a steel dose of gossip and an attitude of sarcastic tendencies so strong it would beat even the most savage of villains. Lola was the one with the ideas. 

The one with a broken wing and no left eyeball was Ruby and she was smack dab in the middle of the coop. She was, to put it quite simply, the sniveling coward of the coop, but only because she’d been torn to pieces near about by a coyote last January. Wouldn’t you be scared of every midnight noise after a thing like that? Yes, Ruby was the frightened one, but she had a mind sharper than two toothpicks at a welding shop and she was very keen on helping Lola, since Lola was the one who had ripped into that coyote and dragged Ruby away from most certain death. 

At the left of the coop was Tequila Cartini, and she was the unloveable skunk of the three. You would think that would be Lola, but NO. It was Tequila Cartini. She was wild and charismatic and the prettiest darn chicken you ever set a pair of eyes on, but she wouldn’t hesitate to cut the pen gate out and leap into town, disregarding everyone she left behind. That was how the coyote got to Ruby, anyhow. Tequila Cartini woke up with the Roosters every morning just so she could show them she was louder than they could ever hope to be. 

Yes, yes, and yes, there were three special chickens in that coop. The rest were regular old squabble heads, so pay them no mind. They don’t matter. They are not going to Florida for the winter. 

But our chickens?

Lola and Ruby and that treacherous Tequila Cartini? 

They were already headed towards what they imagined would be the best clucking weekend of their entire lives. 

You stupid cow! 

Lola tripped over Ruby and they both knocked forward into Tequila Cartini, who turned and gave them the meanest look since Farmer Bumps ran out of hair spray and poured orange juice down his scalp. Tequila Cartini called Lola and Ruby stupid cows all the time, which honestly didn’t bother them because they weren’t cows, they were chickens. And Lola and Ruby paid no heed to untrue labels, unless they were slapping them down on other folks in the coop, like poor Esmerelda when Ruby told Yolanda that she had seen the old girl listening to Liberace, not Bach. 

Bach, Bach, Bach! 

All chickens listened to it. 

It was common knowledge. 

The cows listened to Mozart, but of course with their accents it was pronounced MOO-zart and the insects all were terrific fans of the Beatles. 

Old MacDonald had a farm, 

Do re mi fa so la ti do. 

Back to the chicken churls, though, because they do get so upset when their narrator (hallo, gorgeous) gets off track. 

They were walking a bit off Highway Seven, where the gas stations rose to meet the top of the sky and the pickup trucks provided a new kind of thunder, what with all their incessant rumbling and roaring. Tequila Cartini thought trucks were stupid. She much preferred the other natural forces of the highway; motorcycles. 

There was a whole flock (Tequila didn’t know the correct terminology for a group of motorcycles) of them barreling by and she was enthralled by the sleek bodies and powerful engines. This, Tequila Cartini thought under her breath, was the new way to fly.

Hey Lola!

Tequila Cartini held out her wings to stop her friends from going any further. She turned around and did the face chickens do for smiling, which has a lot more to do with eyes than it does with lips. 

Why did the chickens cross the road? 

Lola clucked and said she didn’t know, but Ruby said, in her timid, whisper wash voice, 

To get to the vacation rental they found on Airbnbarnyard? 

YES! 

Tequila Cartini picked up Ruby and spun her around so violently that they both swung into a bush and collapsed into a fit of squawking giggles. My word, if you have ever heard a bush full of chickens giggling, bless you, sweet child. You will never forget that sound. It will resonate with you always; resound from the tips of your toes straight up to the cartilage of your nose.  (What a fine pair of eyes sit above that nose, young Padawan...never before have I seen such a- oh, never mind, the chickens told me to quit flirting with the readers. Shame, bloody shame.) 

What was I getting around to say? 

Oh right! Chickens cackling. Don’t set it as your alarm sound or you’ll be so shocked you’ll never leave the bed. Forget evil witch laughs, Jeff Bezos needs to giggle like Lola the Chicken. That, in my book, would earn him the spot as ultimate villain once and for all. 

When the horror movie soundtrack ended, the chickens emerged from the overgrown houseplant by the highway and continued walking. They didn’t know where they were going despite their Airbnbarnyard reservations. 

What a confusing life a chicken leads. 

Lola led the trio like a peacock with her head screwed on backwards, all high and mighty but having not a clue where she was taking her life. Like many college students and people in the midst of a mid-life crisis, she was stressed and drowning in it but all the same was managing to keep her neck above the slashing, tiring waters. She wasn’t struggling against the weight of student loans or the weight of student loans later in life once you have five kids and a house, though. She was a chicken migrating for the winter in hopes of finding somewhere warmer, more fun and free and tropically inclined. 

She wanted to be where the grass was so full of pesticides the worms in the soil would be considered poison. 

She wanted to settle down, but only for a night filled with sparkling corn cider and artificial palm tree filtered moonlight. 

Lola wanted it all. 

Soon they had walked over seventeen hours, and those hours were filled with banter and more wicked chicken chortling. I don’t want to go on and on about it though, because I’m only getting paid three coupons an hour to translate for these cluckheads and most of the coupons are for crappy toothpaste. Who needs toothpaste when my teeth are naturally glorious? 

I’m skipping to the good part. 

The signs in the city were all aglow with the shine of a neon moon; basking in the simmering multicolored lettering spelling out the best places to, well, to whatever the baked bleach beans you felt like doing. There was so much to do and see and feel and not feel and Lola, Tequila Cartini, and Ruby were elated to be smack bub in the middle of it all. There were cars zipping by at a speed so fast that if the chickens weren’t so lively, they’d be fried for sure. They danced in and out of the wheels like ballerinas trained by gazelles. It was very graceful. 

The CITY! 

Ruby threw one wing, the not shattered one, in the air and hopped crookedly. She was so excited for this vacation she could hardly keep herself (what was left) together. 

Lola beamed because it was all her idea. She pushed her friends forward until they reached a giant billboard. 

EAT MOR CHIKIN 

Maybe the cold was better than facing this reality. 

Cows… they weren’t friends. They were cannibals of a nature so drastically atrocious, it caused even Tequila Cartini to weep. 

The chickens had escaped the coop, but it was a jump out of the oven and into the meat processor. 

So much for a vacation 

Tequila Cartini sighed 

We paid eighty dollars in toothpaste coupons for a rental home in the most viciously anti chicken, or chikin, I guess, place in the whole USA. 

But it wasn’t just this city.

It was everywhere. 

The cows were oppressing the chickens with their propaganda, but the chickens were uprising. 

It was time for the cows,

To go home.