Seafoodpunch

During an all too brief vacation in Kauai, I learned two things:

1)      Coconuts are natural laxatives

2)      Don’t turn your back on a chicken

I’ve had a few relationships with chickens and they’ve typically been good ones, but this trip to Kauai changed my whole perspective on poultry.

Retirees come to Kauai to enjoy the warm sun and lush landscape. What they don’t tell you is that thousands of chickens do the same thing…

SMART chickens…

and these little, feathered, fiends want the island to themselves.

They have a whole system worked out to reduce the human population:

First of all, the roosters will keep you up all damn night. With about 200,000 roosters distributed around various hotels, visitors get to enjoy a symphony of perfectly timed crowing 24/7.

So after a sleepless night you drive your rental car around the island trying to avoid the chickens and the dozens of hatchlings that make it a habit of running in front of your car at every blind corner.

Nobody wants to run over a fluffy little chick (unless you’re Hawaiian and know better) and so you’ll find yourself crashing into a palm tree instead.

Chicken : 1

Human asleep at the wheel : 0

If you DO manage to get to the beach, you’ll fall asleep on the sand and get sucked out to sea by a sneaker wave (the ocean seems to have struck up a partnership with island’s poultry).

***

Chickens, like cockroaches, are a force to be reckoned with.

And chickens, like roaches, can live for weeks with their head chopped off, as seen in the case of “Mike” the headless chicken:

Mike was meant to be chicken dinner, but he just REFUSED to die. The majority of the brain stem was left intact after farmer Olsen took an ax to the chicken’s head and a blood clot stopped Mike from bleeding to death.

The little brain chunk left behind in the chicken was enough to keep Mike alive while he preened himself with his stumpy neck, strutted his stuff around the yard or communicated via a pathetic gurgle of a crow.

Mike eventually choked to death after 18 months of touring the country as a popular sideshow.

BUT, this just goes to show how resilient chickens really are.

A chicken functions normally with just HALF of a brain, chickens performing at full capacity probably cluck to each other about the meaning of life… and how to get vacationers off their island.

If you DO ever end up going to Kauai, bring ear plugs and try running over as many chickens as possible…

for everyone’s sake.