Tuesday, April 17, 2012

I just received "At Home with Flannery O'Connor: an Oral History" and in the 1st interview a friend tells this story. As we were walking to my car Flannery said, "I've got to tell you a story. Last week, a farmer came to talk to my mother, and we were walking with him down this same little stretch of road at the back of the house. All of a sudden, one of our chickens crossed in front of him, and he reached down and picked up that chicken, and he threw it up in the air. The chicken came flapping down, wings going as fast as it could go, cackling and carrying on. Then, much to our astonishment, he picked that chicken up again and threw it in the air and did that several times. Finally he put the poor chicken down, who by that time was completely dazed. Then the man dusted off his hands and said, "If you ever want to give a chicken a good time, just throw it up in the air."

2 comments:

Radar said...

I think Philip is anxious to throw the chickens up in the air to find out if they do, in fact, have a good time. We will report back. Thanks for the tip Flannery O'Connor.

Philip's experiment this afternoon shows that 2 out of 3 chickens do not like being caught in a fishing net.

Rachel

Anonymous said...

To clarify the findings of the experiment (we surely don't want to extrapolate beyond the data), three out of three chickens do not like it when I attempt to catch them in a net. Since I didn't actually catch two of them them, I can't say whether or not they like that part. One out of one chicken doesn't mind actually being caught, especially when it involves dried mealworms.