I will always remember my 27th birthday as a day of CHICKENS, and this is why...
This past week my company held a trade show Expo in downtown Phoenix. So that meant that the big wigs, marketing gurus and everyone from my company was in town. Being the only local rep in the state they were asking me for all sorts of favors leading up to the event.
Monday morning (my bday) I get an email on my blackberry (not even a phone call) asking me to find 3 laying hens. Not baby chicks, not roosters..... adult laying hens! Thinking this will be a simple task I start calling my feed stores to ask if I could borrow/rent chickens for the 3 days. After calling all stores I know carry chicks at one time, NO ONE HAD HENS! Some had baby chicks and some had roosters but no one had hens! Okay, what next...
Then I remember that one of my dealers who lives near me had chickens at her house as pets. So I called her leaving a random message about needing to borrow her chickens. So I go about my day (attempting to have some sort of fun birthday) and wait for her to call me back. At around 2:00 she calls me back to say "oh yeah, you can borrow my chickens that is no problem. The only thing is that they have no feathers".... NO FEATHERS? No, that will not work, I do not think our marketing manager will like to show off how our chicken feed somehow causes hens to look naked! We discuss a little further my situation and she tells me to call Rocco who has chickens. So, again I give him a call and leave a totally random message about needing to borrow his chickens and to make sure they are not naked! I wait an hour.... no call.
Okay so now I am getting desperate and really need to seek out some chickens. After calling around every store in the phonebook I find out that there is a sort of "Pet Store" in Glendale that does sell laying hens. Now it is 3:00 and I must bust it to get across town (drive for about an hour) to get these damn hens!
This "pet store" was interesting... I wish I took pictures. It is in a run down building and there are all sorts of animals everywhere, rabbits, exotic birds, lizards, turtles, mice, even puppies. In the back I walk outside to locate the chicken coop. I find the laying hens and guess how much they cost...... $16.00! Mind you baby chicks cost like $2! Oh well I needed them desperately and at this point it didn't matter the cost (plus I can write it off as a business expense). I burley man comes out to help me with the chickens (because there is no way I am touching those things... they freak me out). I don't talk about it much but most birds freak me out. Little baby chicks are one thing but full grown chickens that are all squirmy and can peck your eyes out, NO THANK YOU! (maybe its because I saw "BIRDS" when I was little). Even when I worked as a zookeeper I never liked working the bird cages and tried to get them done in light speed.
I ask the employee if I get to pick out the birds and he said sure. So I go one to point out 3 hens that I feel are pretty out of flock of about 20 hens. In this little 4'x6' coop the chickens and feathers are flying everywhere as the man tries to get his hands on my specific 3 hens. He finally catches them and is holding them upside down by their legs. He exits the coop and walks over to grab a cloth BAG! I quickly interupt "NO, I don't want them in a BAG, don't you have a box?" (Honestly, I am not going to EAT them).
"Oh, you want a BOX!" He said all surprised. "Yes" I said, "well we might be all out of boxes" he commented.
There is no way I am taking these chickens home in a bag! Plus, I had Rene's truck that day so they would have to go in the small truck cab with me. So I follow the man over to the dumpster where we have to scrounge up some half broken boxes. He locates 2, one is no bigger than a shoe box and the other just slightly larger, and proceeds to shove 2 chickens into the bigger one (which is an overstatement) and one into the shoebox. Well, at least I have my chickens.
After paying for the them, I walk the boxes to my car and can hear them moving around and scraping the bottom of the box and again, it is totally freaking me out. Now the only way to close the tops of the boxes was to do that alternative folding thing and that just did not seem so secure to me. So I placed them behind my seat and drove an hour in traffic home. The WHOLE drive I was paranoid that the hens would get out of their boxes. I was imagining the news cast reporting a woman on the freeway got into an accident as chickens attacked her in the cab of her truck! Every little movement, every little scratch I heard made me jump. While driving home I get a phone call, it's Rocco. "Oh sure you can borrow my chickens anytime!".... A little late.
I got the rowdy hens home safely but they had to stay the night as I was taking them to the trade show that next morning. I needed to at least provide them water and get them into a larger box. To me this seemed like no easy task as I did not want to touch the birds. I got a big moving box and places a bowl of water in the bottom. I places a towel over the top of the box and grab the larger box with the 2 hens in it. I placed the chicken box over the larger box held it with my hands and put the towel over the whole thing including my arms. I then proceed to blindly open the box and dump out the chickens.... they did not want to come out! I began shaking the little box until, PLOP, they both fell out. Now on to the last chicken. I did not want the others to escape so I conducted my same protocol with the towel. Again the chicken did not want out of its little box so I had to shake it out. Once all in their big box I go to take a peak thinking I most likely broke one of their legs. They were good and I just hoped they would survive the night in the garage.
They did. I put the box in my car the next morning and was on my way. I get to the parking garage and park. Go to get the box out of the back and find they have spilled their water all over the bottom of the box and now it is all soggy. How in the heck do I get these chickens to the Expo without them falling through the bottom! Thankfully I had the towel in the car so I rig it across the bottom and hold the ends to support the box. So here I am walking through downtown Phoenix with a box of chickens praying AGAIN that they won't get out, or in this case fall through the bottom.
I finally get there, my chickens still with me, and plop them next to the display cages. They were finally out of my hands and I was going to let someone else grab them and put them in the display. Finally FREE OF THE CHICKENS!
Well not completely....... I still had to find them a home. I decide to give them to my dealer friend who had the naked chickens. So I find myself for the 3rd time with chickens in my car!
Now my dealer has 2 kids who where really excited for the addition to their flock. She told them to take the box out to the coop and not open the box until they were in the coop. Well kids will be kids, and opened the box outside of the coop thinking they would be like their hand raised chickens and just stick around the yard....... NOPE! They took off flying every which way all erratic and they lost the chickens.
Yep, all that trouble and now they are coyote bait.
Thank you to my friends and family who came out with me for my birthday celebration! I had a good night... starting out for dinner at 
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