Chickens

Serena looked in the old red barn and saw a large chicken coop filled with a few hundred harmless-looking chickens. But Serena knew better. She sniffed. The barn smelled of chicken poo and rancid fat. There a dozen chick heads sticking out of the straw on the floor under the chicken killing stand. If this old barn was the last clue in the $1 Million prize scavenger hunt, those chickens were modified in some ridiculous fashion.

She had already defeated the honeybees with teeth and the crocodiles that hopped like bunnies. The chickens looked so harmless she knew she was in the right place. The dilapidated barn should not have had a chicken coop in it anyway; chicken coops belong outside. What kind of chickens lived in an enclosure inside a barn?

As a toddler, Serena crawled into a chicken coop to pet the baby chicks. The hens gave her a terriable pecking. Serena had been afraid of the birds ever since. She wouldn't even eat chicken.

She stepped closer. There was something attached to the chickens’ heads. Oh, my goodness, they were wearing helmets. Wait, were those lasers on the chicken’s heads? No, that would be ridiculous. One chicken saw a grasshopper crawl through a hole in the wall. The chicken moved toward the grasshopper, there was a flash of green light, and the grasshopper exploded in a puff of smoke. Suddenly the air filled with the aroma of something burning. Uh oh, this was a problem.

Serena knew she was the first to figure out the clue, but her competitors could not be more than ½ hour behind. Behind the chicken coop was a large golden box with the logo of the hunt stamped on it. She needed that box, but how to get past the lethal fowls?

Serena looked up. A rope on a pulley used to lift hay bales to the barn's second story swung above the chickens. Would their lasers shoot that far? Let us find out. She took a handful of the rocks outside the door and threw them at the ceiling. The chickens responded. Multiple lasers rent the air. The buzzing sound was loud. Duh, yea. The lasers could reach the top as attested to by the new holes in the second floor. Hay drifted through holes and down to the floor.

Wait a minute. She could see what appeared to be a pathway through the chickens marked by flat blue paving stones. Serena frowned. She backed slowly out of the barn and found a small metal bucket.

Giving it a heave, she threw the bucket on the first stone on the path. Nothing. She rolled the bucket to the second stone. It was not until the fourth stone that electricity crackled, and the bucket burst into flames. Nope. The path is not the way.

There was a large pot filled with chicken fat on a table near the chickens. What if she covered herself in chicken fat and clucked her way to the box? Stripping off all her clothing, Serena moved carefully along the edge of the coop to the station. Grabbing sticky, smelly, nasty fat gobs, she rubbed chicken fat over every inch of herself, then she poured the small amount of remaining fat onto the floor and stepped in it. Bending over on all fours, she crawled into the laser helmeted flock with her eyes on the box ten yards away from her. She heard lasers snapping. Was she hit? No. Her competitors were here. A young man had just gotten zapped. He fell to the ground. Oops.

There was chicken poo, feathers, straw, and grain on the barn floor. Straw stuck to Serena as she slowly made her way through the chickens. She had to stop twice as she ran into a chicken roadblock. At each roadblock, Serena would slowly inch forward until the chickens parted. A different woman tried to leap onto the pully rope only to be zapped by multiple chickens. She was down. Serena kept crawling. She was sweating like Tina Turner.

Looking back, she saw yet another person walking the stone path, boom. She heard the electricity buzz and knew that person was down. By the time she reached the end of the coop, she was a sight. The stuff was even in her mouth. One chicken lasered her in the butt at one of the roadblocks. It was a flesh wound, but it hurt, and it was covered in debris from the floor.

The box was hers. In the box was a certificate for the winner. There was a space to sign your name to claim the prize. There was a pen and a webcam. She heard the noise as the latest group to try was shooting the chickens. Serena signed her name activated the webcam, and took a picture of her naked self, chicken feathers, chicken poo, grain, and butt burn with the certificate. The scavenger hunt officials cheered from their safe location.