Chicken!

While I was running errands this morning, I popped into the Hobby Lobby craft store to see if there was any garland made mostly of fall-colored berries. I found some, and then walked to the other side of the store to the scrapbooking department. Those who know me will not be surprised at that statement. If I'm within 5 miles of a scrapbooking department, I'll make a bee-line for it.

It isn't that I needed anything, but there is a magnetic draw to the papers and pens and stick 'em and decorative stickers. So, I checked the papers...and I thumbed through a thick pad of papers called 'Country Side'.  It wasn't on sale...and I never but one of those blocks of tempting papers unless they are at least 40% off. The full price of $19.00 is way too much, especially since I've got a room full of stuff to use up.  You'll be happy to know that I stuck to my resolve and didn't fold.  Well, mostly.  There was one sheet of 12x12" paper in that pad that I wanted, and since I'm not the type to pull it free from the binding and pretend I found it on the rack for 59 cents, I looked once more to the racks of papers just in case a similar paper might be sold individually. Luck was with me. I found one that was quite similar...certainly it would serve my purposes.

I had to have it. Those of you who have this same disease of scrapbooking and love of papers will understand.  It evoked a strong memory...it being covered with chickens and roosters.  You see, my uncle had chickens when I was a grade schooler. They were kept in a pen behind my Grandmother's house where my aunt and uncle lived at the time.  One day, I was invited to help Uncle Ros when he went to feed the chickens. It was the first and last time I did it.  Those hungry feathered fiends came at me as if they were going to chew me up for dinner, rather than the corn I was trying to sprinkle across the pen.  They pecked at my feet and I froze up, pulling my arms around me and standing stone still, screaming.  Uncle Ros took the corn and let me out of the pen, all the while finding great amusement in my fearful encounter. He could tell me all day long that those birds weren't going to hurt me, and I wasn't going to hear of it, unless I was on the outside looking in!

Another story came to mind, too.  That was when my Grandfather took me outside to witness the butchering of another chicken. He caught the hen, wrung her neck, and chopped the head off with his hatchet. The chicken jumped down off the tree stump, took off at a dead run, while I chased it, asking Grampa how the chicken could see where 'he' was going when his head was off.  The hen had run itself under Gramp's shed...and that's where it stayed until he crawled under there and grabbed the feet to bring it out.

I wasn't afraid of that chicken...it couldn't see me or my feet... so it wasn't likely to try to devour me. We sure made a meal of it, though!