Great, great Grandma was alive and well in the 1800’s. Among her many other chores, she cared for a flock of chickens. In return, the chickens provided lots of eggs that Grandma sold in town for an important additional income.
Chickens are foragers. As a group they roam far and wide in search of fresh greens, proteins and scraps. Chickens even bring themselves home every evening just before dark to roost inside the hen house at night.
One warm spring day Grandma’s chicken flock discovered some juicy liquid seeping out from under the silo. This juice was the melting grains and greens that been fermenting all winter. The chickens found the silage juice very much to their liking and drank their fill. Then, being so stuffed with all that juice, the chickens slowly waddled back in the direction of their coop, but most of them didn’t make it all the way.
One by one the chickens stumbled and fell over on their backs, totally intoxicated. When Grandma happened to go outside she was startled to see all of her chickens laying as dead all over the yard. At that point Grandma had no idea what had happened to her hens, but she was devastated. Suddenly Grandma was without a flock or income.
It occurred to her that perhaps if she acted quickly, at least the meat could be saved. So, Grandma began plucking out their feathers to ready the birds for processing. Ordinarily, chickens are killed furst by beheading and then plucked, but obviously, the birds were apparently already dead.
Plucking so many chickens takes a long time, but she finished them all about the same time Grandpa came home. He was shocked to see the project underway, so Grandma began telling him what she knew.
About that time some of the chickens began moving, kicking and coming out of their stupor. Grandma and Grandpa both stared at the awakening chickens now staggering all over in the yard. Nobody wants to see their next meal walking around. It was appalling. Grandma was suddenly regretting what she’d done, but it was certainly too late now to do anything about that. Grandpa was laughing at her until his sides hurt!
Eventually, they figured out what the chickens had gotten into and why they at first appeared dead. To add to Grandma’s discomfort, folks passing by on the road were stopping to ask about the naked chickens because it was quite a sight. Grandpa was really enjoying telling and retelling the story to everybody, but Grandma was irritated and embarrassed.
The next day Grandma noticed that without their protective coats of feathers, the chickens were getting sunburned. Poor Grandma, she felt so bad that thanks to her snap decision the poor birds were now getting burned. But Grandma had an idea. She collected up all her scraps of yarn and quickly knitted little shirts for each of the chickens to wear until their feathers could grow back.
The people passing by on the road now saw a new spectacle, multicolored little shirts on the entire flock of chickens. The story made for good entertainment to the whole neighborhood and Grandpa delighted in telling it over and over to everybody who stopped to ask.
All the snickering was really hard on Grandma’s constitution, but, being the strong person that she was, Grandma took to saying that it served the chickens right… in fact it would serve anyone right, who gets so foolishly drunk that they pass out, to wake up naked and nearly in the soup pot!
Hmmmm, words to live by?