The Chicken Who Laid Lime Eggs Read online



  THE CHICKEN WHO LAID LIME EGGS

  John N. Whittaker & Gertrude C. Whittaker

  The Chicken Who Laid Lime Eggs

  Copyright © 2013 John N. Whittaker

  & Gertrude C. Whittaker

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design: Laura Shinn Designs

  https://laurashinn.yolasite.com

  The Chicken Who Laid Lime Eggs is a work of fiction.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Dedication:

  For Hannah Maria Gillis née Abercrombie,

  whose bedtime story inspired this book.

  Chapter One

  Once upon a time in Minnesota there was a chicken called Beulah and she laid lime eggs. She hadn’t always laid lime eggs. In the beginning she was just an ordinary chicken who laid ordinary eggs. Then one day a really strange thing happened. She was pecking in the dirt with the other chickens when suddenly a voice came out of nowhere and said, ‘I am The Great Chicken, and I am tired of watching chickens pecking in the dirt and laying eggs all day long. People eat boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, you name it, they eat it, without a word of thanks to The Great Chicken. The Great Chicken is going to teach them a lesson they will never forget. And you, whatever your name is’ - here there was a pause and a flipping of pages- ‘you, Beulah, are going to help him.’

  Beulah looked around. The other chickens were still pecking in the dirt, which meant that she, Beulah, was the only chicken who had heard the voice.

  Now, you can never be sure about voices that come out of nowhere. Normally they can’t be trusted. Most chickens who hear them are imagining things. So Beulah, who was an intelligent chicken, decided that the voice might not be The Great Chicken after all. Maybe Laura, that obnoxious chicken who pretended to be a ventriloquist, was throwing her voice again. But Laura was on the other side of the yard squawking at Beatrice. No way she could throw her voice that far. Or it might be indigestion, although the voice sounded bossy and important, which was just how The Great Chicken was supposed to sound. Had The Great Chicken really chosen her for an important task? Beulah was scared.

  Weeks went by. Beulah was happy and forgot about The Great Chicken. Then one day she heard the voice again. This time it came out of a big white cloud.

  ‘It’s me, you idiot’, said the voice, ‘Unfortunately you are the smartest chicken I could find for this job. Now pay attention. Everything is taken care of. You don’t have to do anything. Just wait. And above all, don’t panic.’

  Beulah was frightened out of her wits. If The Great Chicken hadn’t warned her not to panic she would have panicked then and there.

  Harry, the chicken farmer’s son, had a sharp eye. He noticed before his father did that Beulah hadn’t laid an egg for three days.

  ‘Maybe she’s off her feed,’ Harry’s father said.

  Harry pointed out that Beulah’s eyes were rolling around like pebbles in a bottle and that he could hear a whirring noise in her belly.

  ‘We’ll take her to the Chicken Research Lab,’ Harry’s father said. ‘They’ll fix her up.’

  Beulah didn’t want to leave the chicken coop. She wanted things to be the way they were before she heard the voice. But The Great Chicken- if it really was The Great Chicken- had different plans, or maybe, just maybe, Beulah was losing her mind.

  At the Chicken Research Lab Harry and his father watched a man in a white coat put Beulah on a table and examine her. First the man examined Beulah on top. Then he examined her underneath. That was when it happened. Beulah squawked, made a loud whirring noise and laid a big green egg. The egg dropped on the floor and broke in a puff of green smoke. In no time at all, a chicken just like Beulah hopped out of the eggshell and began running back and forth across the floor. Everybody stared. The chicken ran straight up a wall and sat on a shelf. Beulah was just as surprised as everyone else. The man in the white coat didn’t know what to do. Finally he lifted the chicken off the shelf and examined it.

  Then it happened again. The chicken squawked, made a loud whirring noise and laid a big green egg. The egg hit the floor and broke wide open in a cloud of green smoke. In a split second another chicken hopped out of the eggshell. Now there were three chickens in the room.

  The chickens were too fast for the man in the white coat. They raced across the floor, skidded around corners, climbed walls and ran across the ceiling, cackling and shedding feathers as they went. Harry was speechless. He had never seen a chicken climb a wall or walk on the ceiling. Come to think of it, he had never seen anybody or anything do that.

  Pretty soon the third chicken laid an egg and a fourth chicken hopped out, dusted itself off and joined the rest. Green smoke the color of limes filled the room. The man in the white coat sneezed.

  When the man opened the door to let out the smoke, the chickens hopped single file into the street. Beulah led the way, followed by chicken number two, chicken number three and chicken number four. At the end of the line chicken number four laid a big green egg.

  Before long there were so many chickens people were afraid they would take over the town. No one wanted to hurt the chickens. ‘We can’t shoot ‘em. After all, they’re fellow creatures,’ the mayor exclaimed.

  Getting the fire department to hose down the chickens was a mistake. Water, mixed with the smoke from lime eggs, leaves a sticky green slime on everything. Police cars and fire-trucks skidded in it and crashed into each other. People slipped on the sidewalk and fell in the slimy green stuff.

  Harry suggested that the police block the road with a van. He hoped the chickens would walk up a plank into the back of the van. Once they were locked inside, the police could decide what to do with them. It sounded like a good idea, but when the chickens saw the van they hopped onto the sidewalk and marched around it. The townsfolk were surprised at how smart the chickens were.

  The police chief winked and said, ‘I think they’re headed for the highway.’ He was right. The chickens marched to the end of Main Street and disappeared down the highway in a cloud of green smoke.

  Of course there was a big mess to clean up afterwards and the mayor in the next town had to be warned that the chickens were coming, but at least the worst was over. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  The chickens passed through town after town, kicking their heels, never missing a beat. They kept to the middle of the highway, hatching chickens on the center line. Onlookers coughed and gasped in the green smoke. When it rained and the smoke mixed with water, a sticky green slime ran down people’s faces and into their clothes and oozed down chimneys and under doors. It wasn’t long before there were thousands of chickens marching in single file across the country. Traffic came to a halt. Trains waited at railroad crossings for hours while the chickens paraded by one by one. Planes had to fly around the smoke. The chickens climbed over barricades without even slowing down, going straight up one side and down the other. They were friendly, but what would happen when there were even more of them?