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2003-08-31 - 7:38 a.m.

Intellectual Discussions

Diva and I recently spent several hours in the car traveling to a summer conference. As so often happens when we’re together, we engaged in some serious intellectual discussion. Birds sparked that day’s high-brow conversation.

We were traveling south on 65 somewhere near Lebanon, Missouri, when we passed a flock of weird birds eating in a ditch. Diva questioned their species.

I was fairly sure I’d seen them before and knew what they were: “They’re turkens.”

My answer brought a puzzled look and another question, “And what, oh wiseass, is a turken?”

“A cross between a turkey and a chicken.”

“You big dummy, you don’t have any idea what those birds were.”

“Do, too. They were turkens.”

“You’re lying! You don’t know what the hell they were.”

“Am not! They were turkens.”

And so it went.

The other day I had a few spare minutes and decided to use them wisely by doing research for little known chicken facts. Did you know:

• Chickens will lay bigger and stronger eggs if lighting is changed to make them think a day is 28 hours long

• There are four places in the US with the word chicken in their name. Chicken, Alaska; Chicken Bristle in both Illinois and Kentucky; and Chicken Town, Pennsylvania

• The term Chicken Pox didn’t come from people believing the pox came from chickens, it came from the Old English term gican pox which means the itching pox

• There are approximately 450 million chickens in the US

• When a chicken makes a sound it has a meaning. They give different alarm calls when threatened by different predators

• There are more chickens than people in the world

• The waste produced by one chicken in its lifetime can supply enough electricity to run a 100-watt bulb five hours.

• The greatest number of yolks in one chicken egg is nine

• Alektorophobia is the fear of chickens

Oh, and so you know, the egg came first. Scientists reporting in National Geographic say reptiles were laying eggs thousands of years before the appearance of chickens, and the first chickens came from an egg laid by a bird that was not quite a chicken.

I am now armed and dangerous for any future intellectual dialogue involving chickens.

You think you know a lot about yard birds? Click here to see how much you really know about chickens.

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