A Blink of the Screen

what happens.

HOLLYWOOD CHICKENS

    M ORE T ALES FROM THE F ORBIDDEN P LANET
, ED . R OZ K AVENY , T ITAN B OOKS L TD , L ONDON, 1990
    As the author’s note says at the end, this was based on a true story. At least, Diane Duane swore it was true, and I wasn’t about to argue. And the story just rolled out in front of me. Fortuitously, not long after I was asked for a story for
More Tales from the Forbidden Planet,
published in 1990 …
    The facts are these.
    In 1973, a lorry overturned at a freeway interchange in Hollywood. It was one of the busiest in the United States and, therefore, the world.
    It shed some of its load. It had been carrying chickens. A few crates broke.
    Alongside the interchange, bordered on three sides by thundering traffic and on the fourth by a wall, was a quarter-mile of heavily shrubbed verge.
    No one bothered too much about a few chickens.
    *
    Peck peck.
    Scratch. Scratch.
    Cluck?
    It is a matter of record that, after a while, those who regularly drove this route noticed that the chickens had survived. There were, and indeed still are, sprinklers on the verge to keep the greenery alive and presumably the meagre population of bugs was supplemented by edible fallout from the constant stream of traffic.
    The chickens seemed to be settling in. They were breeding.
    Peck peck. Scratch. Peck …
    Peck?
    Scratch peck?
    Peck?
    Peck + peck = squawk
    Cluck?
    A rough census indicated that the population had stabilized at around fifty birds. For the first few years young chickens would frequently be found laminated to the blacktop, but some sort of natural selection appeared to be operating, or, if we may put it another way, flat hens don’t lay eggs.
    Passing motorists did occasionally notice a few birds standing at the kerb, staring intently at the far verge.
    They looked like birds with a problem, they said.
    SQUAWK PECK PECK CROW!
I
Peck squawk peck
II
Squawk crow peck
III
Squawk squawk crow
IV
Scratch crow peck waark
V
(Neck stretch) peck crow
VI
Peck peck peck (preen feathers)
VII
(Peck foot) scratch crow
VIII
Crow scratch
IX
Peck (weird gurgling noise) peck
X
Scratch peck crow waark (to keep it holy).
    In fact, aside from the occasional chick or young bird, no chicken was found dead on the freeway itself apart from the incident in 1976, when ten chickens were seen to set out from the kerb together during the rush-hour peak. This must have represented a sizeable proportion of the chicken population at that time.
    The driver of a gas tanker said that at the head of the little group was an elderly cockerel, who stared at him with supreme self-confidence, apparently waiting for something to happen.
    Examination of the tanker’s front offside wing suggests that the bird was a Rhode Island Red.
    Cogito ergo cluck.
    Periodically an itinerant, or the just plain desperate, would dodge the traffic to the verge and liberate a sleeping chicken for supper.
    This originally caused some concern to the Department of Health, who reasoned that the feral chickens, living as they did so close to the traffic, would have built up dangerously high levels of lead in their bodies, not to mention other noxious substances.
    In 1978, a couple of research officers were sent into the thickets to bring back a few birds for a sacrifice to Science.
    The birds’ bodies were found to be totally lead-free.
    We do not know whether they checked any eggs.
    This is important (see Document C).
    They did remark incidentally, however, that the birds appeared to have been fighting amongst themselves. (See Document F:
Patterns of Aggression in Enclosed Environments
, Helorksson and Frim, 1981.) We must assume, in view of later developments, that this phase passed.
    Four peck-(neck stretch) and seven cluck-scratch ago, our crow-(peck left foot)-squawk brought forth upon this cluck-cluck-squawk …
    In the early hours of 10 March 1981, Police Officer James Stooker Stasheff, in pursuit of a suspect, following a chase which resulted in a seven-car collision, a little way from the verge, saw a construction apparently made of long twigs, held together with cassette tape, extending several feet into the carriageway. Two chickens were on the end of it, with twigs in their beaks. ‘They looked as if they was nest building,’ he now recalls. ‘I went past again about 10 a.m. It was all smashed up in the gutter.’
    Officer Stasheff went on to say, ‘You always get tapes along the freeway. Any freeway. See, when they get snarled up in the