The Last Chapter of "Earl Stories."

The Last Chapter

 

“Well, Lrae, while Unkel Dan is staring at the ceiling, why don’t you show me around the neighborhood.”

 Lrae stood on the front of the time machine, and they lurched away from the launch site, two intoxicated chickens on a Segway.  With Earl trying to navigate , and Lrae obstructing his view, they soon crash landed through the roof of one of O’Brien’s Mac County chicken houses.  The broiler house chickens were startled by these featherless aliens and their strange looking time machine, and amidst a great deal of clucking and flapping, vacated the immediate premises of the crash site.

“Where are we Lrae?”

“Well, hek, Earl, it ain’t exactly where I amed to bring ya, but its close enuf.  I wanted to show you these genetikally inhanced broilin hens, cuz theys a pekular new-fangled kind of berd!”

“When you say broilin hens, you don’t mean that’s the name of the breed?”

“No, no Earl, these is bein bred speshal for the frying pan, or the rotissorary. These hens have been dummed down and transfixed by mixin ther molecular partisipals with them shmoos, and other cartune characters.”

Lrae pulled out his small flask of lethal corn liquor, and Earl and Lrae continued to get schnockered as they sat lackadaisically against the damaged remains of the time machine.  Earl is telling Lrae a long fractured story about the famous rooster Chanticleer and the crafty fox Reynard when they noticed something was up.

“Say, Earl, somethins up!  Are you seein what I’m seein, or mebbe my vishun is blurred?”

“These chikens look like they’re on steroids Lrae.  Look at the size of those thighs!”

“They luk bigger by the minut!”

“Buggers, they aren’t bigger. They’re closing in on us Lrae!”

“They got em a meen luk Earl.  I thenk these here chikins are sum a them “Angry Chikins” that’s been stirrin up truble here in the county.”

Earl and Lrae were suddenly surrounded by a hundred and twenty “Angry Chickens,” which was exactly twelve per cent of the thousand chickens that were crowded into this broiler house.  Some of the “Angry Chickens” had beak rings and razor blade spurs, and a nasty ammonia laced aroma.  The ring leader was a super sized leghorn, who was currently appraising the reason for all the commotion Earl and Lrae had caused.

“I say, I say, and I repeat unkindly one more time, what have we here?  Appears to me boys, appears to me boys, that we have here not one, but two inebriated plucked and puny chickens.  I say, plucked and puny chickens. Do I need to repeat repeat? Plucked and puny!  Puny! I say, I said, and said again!”

This cartoon like rendition of Foghorn, the famous comic strip Leghorn, led the “Angry Chickens” in several verses of the Camptown races, and in truth, they weren’t that bad.  They harmonized all the Doo Dah Day, with some deep vocalization improved by the heavy steroids they were on.

“I say, and I say again, what do you scrawny motherless mutants have to say for yourselves?”

Earl and Lrae had enjoyed the singing, and were going to ask for an encore, but the Leghorns were giving them threatening looks. Earl and Lrae looked pale and sickly leaning against the broken time machine. Their goose bumps were accentuated beneath the fluorescent fixtures by their nakedness and escalating alarm. Earl still wore his tin foil hat, even when showering, but he had forgotten why.

“You boys, you boys, you’ve disrupted our chicken house!  We’re “Angry Chickens,” we’re bona fide “Angry Chickens,” and we, we don’t like being disrupted.  We’ll teach you interlopers not to drop in uninvited!  Teach you a lesson you two won’t forget!”

“The “Angry Chickens” pressed in close, and Earl and Lrae were just about to lose control of their non-existent bladders, and it appeared a small tear was coming out of Earl’s non-existent tear duct when the nursery room fairy appeared just in the nick of time.  Earl and Lrae looked at one another in disbelief at the little fairy dressed in her slightly soiled pearl and dewdrop dress.  The hundred and twenty “Angry Chickens were also momentarily taken back at the diminutive winged creature.

In a soft fairy voice you’d expect from a palm sized fairy, she spoke to Earl, “I am the fairy that normally takes care of well loved nursery room toys, and when they become too old and decrepit I make them real.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I’ve come to make you real Earl!”

Earl thought about this.  Here he was surrounded by a hundred or more “Angry Chickens” who were bent on mischief, and out of the blue a little fairy appears with a way out of his dilemma.  Just in the nick of time! 

The “Angry Chickens” began kicking chicken litter onto the little diaphanous wings of the nursery room fairy to the tune of “Bet my Money on a Bob-Tailed Nag.”  Not having ever seen a nursery room fairy they were a bit cautious, particularly since she was taking a swing at them every once in a while with her little wand. 

Earl was thinking fast.  Was the time machine still operable?  How good was Lrae in a real hen house brawl?  Why hadn’t these hens been de-beaked?  What if the “Leghorns” murdered the little nursery room fairy before she could turn him into a real chicken?

Lrae interrupted by asking the litter soiled fairy whether Earl would be fighting  the “Angry Chickens” as a featherweight or a bantamweight after she made Earl real.

Earl suddenly realized that this sweet fairy with a developing attitude was about to do the same number on him as she did on the Velveteen Rabbit.  He would be a real chicken in a real chicken house of “Angry Leghorns!”  That couldn’t be good!  Earl kicked a little chicken litter on the fairy himself in answer to her quest to make him real.

“No thanks, little fairy!  I have an ideal life as a rubber chicken, and at Julie’s I’m at the top of the pecking order, not the bottom.  There’s also the fact that these chickens here are nearly full grown, and about to hauled off, electrocuted and butchered.”

All hundred and twenty “Angry Chickens” stopped kicking chicken litter in unison at the news.

 Earl couldn’t resist a little rap, and chirped, “What’s it gonna be when they come for you?”

Again in unison, they all cocked their heads, and gave their razor spurred ringleader a questioning cock- eyed look.

“I say fellows, I say, don’t get your hackles up.  He’s just funning us, just a funning.  Right sport?  Ain’t that right?

There’s never a good time or place to end a story that has no story line so it might as well be right here.  All I can say is if you read this whole thing bow to stern you are living a sad life, so grab a life preserver, jump overboard, and swim for shore.