At the White House in Washington, the President was busy at his desk in the Oval Office. He was worried about a very important matter and had a lot of papers to sign. An assistant knocked on the door.
‘Well, what is it?’ the President snapped.
‘We need to talk, sir.’
‘I can’t talk now. I have a very important matter to attend to. I can’t just drop everything and talk.’
‘Yes, sir, but this chicken business is getting out of hand.’
‘Look here, Hickenlooper, I’m trying to prevent World War Three from breaking out tomorrow and you want to talk about a chicken? You need a rest, Hickenlooper.’
‘Yes sir, but it’s not just one chicken, it’s thousands and thousands of chickens and they’re heading straight for New York City. Manhattan will be devastated.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t forget, sir, New York voted for you in the last election.’
‘Good Lord. You’re right. This is a national disaster.’
‘Yes, Mr. President.’
‘Mobilize the Armed Forces and the Marines and the Salvation Army. Alert Pest Control. Distribute weapons to everyone in New York. And get me an expert on chickens, pronto. Leave no stone unturned, Hickenlooper. How’s that for leadership?’
‘Very impressive, sir.’
‘Oh, and Hickenlooper?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Find out who’s responsible for this fiasco and throw the book at him.’
Beulah was head chicken. She had never been to New York City but somehow she knew exactly how to get there. The trouble was that by this time there were tens of thousands of chickens trudging along behind her and that was far too many for even a smart chicken like Beulah to look after. Then she remembered The Great Chicken. He had promised to teach people a lesson and this was his way of doing it. A big tear rolled down Beulah’s beak. If only she were back in Minnesota.
In the Big Apple it was even worse. Cars and buses and taxis got in the way; drivers honked and swore and shook their fists. The chickens lost track of each other in the traffic. Some headed one way and some another, laying eggs right and left until the city was overrun by chickens; pedestrians tripped over them; cars swerved off the road; chickens danced in the streets and swung from traffic lights; they hopped on subway trains and startled the passengers; they scared shoppers out of stores; they whooped it up in office buildings and disrupted meetings; they swarmed into classrooms, stampeded teachers and shut down schools; the lime-green smoke and the everlasting cackling kept people awake at night. Eventually, buses and subway trains and even taxis stopped running and no one went to work. In the big skyscrapers downtown chickens rode the elevators, from bottom to top and top to bottom, day and night, night and day. New Yorkers fled to the suburbs and were replaced by chickens.
On television, they called it the ‘Hatch Attack’, although it wasn’t really an attack. The chickens were friendly; they just wanted to go on laying eggs and having fun. One man wrote to the New York Times (he was wasting his time because the newspaper had been hijacked by chickens): ’As I was preparing for bed,’ he wrote, ‘I noticed a chicken perched on my night-stand. I had never had a chicken in my bedroom before. Actually it seemed friendly and I didn’t like to shoo it away. That was before it laid a large green egg that broke in a puff of green smoke the color of limes. When a fully-grown chicken hopped out of the shell and laid an egg of its own I called 911. Of course no one answered.’
Unlike the grown-ups, children greeted the chickens with open arms. Terrified teachers, hen-pecked policemen and chickens walking on the ceiling made their day.