Story and Mischief by Warrigal
Farmer Rudd called all the farmyard animals into the barn for a good talking to. This farm has gone to the pack under the old farmer. I’m going to make it all better!
He handed out tasks to all the animals and it fell to The Little Red Hen to produce the farmer’s “Education Revolution”.
“Who will help me put this revolution together?” said the Little Red Hen. “Not I.” said Farmer Rudd. “I’ve got more important things to do and a number of photo ops to attend”
“Oh…”, said the Little Red Hen, “Well, I better get sitting on this thing!”
Yes children, even in the best fairy stories your most favourite characters sometimes get the poopy end of the stick.
Sadly after two years in government all that the Little Red Hen has been able to do is lay an egg.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
To be fair to the Rhode Islanders, they experienced childhood trauma. Just before maturity and egg laying times there was a lot of noise coming from their pen. On inspection I noticed a huge bird with talons the size of a pitchfork, with a blood dripping beak ripping into one of them.
It was Gertrude, the smallest chicken with the biggest heart. I called Helvi, who with a stick chased the bird out from the opening that it had used to fly into the pen. The chicken had been disemboweled and was beyond life.
The next day, would you believe, this bird was at it again. This time it was the rooster who got killed. After we managed to chase it out I stitched up the opening with steel wire. That was it!
Our grandkids were aghast and agape and still talk about it.
I tried to look up what kind of bird would do this it but our bird book had been snitched by some bastard that had stayed in the cottage. The best we could come up with was that it was most likely a ‘butcher bird’.
Perhaps, this is why they took to eating their own eggs. They experienced murder within their own family, twice.
They will live out their lives now with the best possible care and top quality scratch mix and are even allowed out into the vegie garden, much to the chagrin of the Leghorns and Austral Orps who remain locked in their pens.
Farming is not easy.
LikeLike
Despite sticking around the Ag faculty at Sydney Uni for long nough to scape out a degree in Ag Sci with a specialty in Animal Husbandry, I have to admit that chooks were my least favourite animal, in a neck and neck race to the bottom with pigs.
Although the stench was about equal, the feathers and the flapping were the things that grossed me out the most. Even less attractive than having to shove a gloved arm up a cows bum to find out if/how far pregnant she was. I’d like to propose a toast to the evolution of an inexpensive ultrasound as a far superior alternative.
Anyway, the supermarket is as close as I want to come to livestock nowadays. I’ve done my time. Iv’e got the boots and the piece of paper to prove it. And I’m so happy to be in the relatively livestock-free Inner West of cyberia.
I’ll have the steak, Diane, thanks.
LikeLike
Diane is away sick today Emmo. You’ve gotta deal with me and I only have chook souvlakis with tzatsiki today. Eggplants Julia-anne and rotund ruddish. You want ouzo with that?
LikeLike
That’s the most beautiful chook I ever did see!
She can come and live in my chook house any day… though, I’ve got this awful feeling that it’ll be the door to the doghouse, Mrs At will be opening for us.
I don’t know, guys. At least I’m not expecting a new wave of vicious, fascist dictators to rule the schools, the likes that came out of the woodwork when Kennett took over here and perpetuated by the robber barons of Canberra during the decade-plus before Rudd appeared.
We’ve yet to see the result of Julia’s vision. Who knows, she might well be doing what the Bush admin did visiting us to get ideas about our health system. Come, see, snub and piss orf! I hope the Greens have her ear.
Oh, and waz, I would have thought that you wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to make that oval sign say, “Education Ovulation” or some such witty punnerism!
LikeLike
I don’t know, but the Rhode Island red chooks are problematic. They think nothing of eating others and I had to separate the much larger Leghorns and black Austral Orps from them.
They eat their own eggs and have cost me a fortune in feed, and on top of all that they can suffer from deep seated depressions. Not long ago, one of them had tied a tea bag string around one foot and was found hanging upside-down from the perch, still alive but needed weeks of therapy.
I have taken to watch their egg laying (and eating them) seated on a cane chair while reading ‘Black Waters’. The flies don’t help now.
It’s not lack of calcium. They have buckets of shell grit. They are just vindictive and dominating. Even so, I haven’t got it in me to wring their necks.
When I look at the brilliant compilation above by Warrigal, is this little red hen also getting ready to eat her own egg?
LikeLike
Do chooks have psychologists?
LikeLike
Ha! The coicidence!
A psychologist from Texas who studies the use of what he calls “functional words” such as pronouns, prepositions, etc, is doing some research on the use of these words and is now studying a play I’ve translated into english to see how the pronoun “I” is used by those in power. He is, of course, looking at the text in english and in Greek the word “I” is extremely rare, due to the fact that the language is a reflexive one, which means the pronouns are unnecessary. The person, number, tense and many more things are identified through the many changes the verb undergoes.
Anyhow, we had an interesting little discussion. He’s checking out Euripides’ play The Bacchae and how often the young King, Pentheus says the word “I” -which is none!
LikeLike
Ato, I don’t think that chooks understand functional words, they understand chook food.
LikeLike
Now where can I get a job like that, atomou?!
😉
LikeLike
Asty, I’ve just received another email from him this am. Should I ask him?
He sounds interesting but barking up the wrong tree methinks. From what I can gather, he’s trying to put a few bits of concrete around the theory that people use the word “I” more often when they are strong than when they are weak. Perhaps that is but looking at translated works, particularly those of poets and playwrites -rather than prose writers- is fraught with possible wrong leads, two important ones being that the pronouns, particularly in ancient greek and Latin are very seldom used, since the verb shows who’s doing the what,and because translators will take lots of liberties in order to accomodate their own audience (as well as their agenda).
Anyhow, the converstation is interesting. I am very tempted to ask him -as a “social psychologist” what his thoughts are about the latest shooting in the Hood Institute of Serial Killers but I shall be highly disciplined in that respect.
Also sounds a bit like one of those born-againers…
We shall see!
LikeLike
Sure you can ask him if you like, atomou.
But like yourself, I think this friend of yours is on the wrong track. What about the use of the ‘royal we’…? This would seem to me to suggest that those who are strong recognize the social origin and nature of that strength and this fact is recognized by the use of the royal ‘We’ by emperors, kings and princes.
His examination of the use of ‘I’ is itself perhaps the product of an individualistic society, which is less aware of the social origins and nature of political popularity. If it reflects anything at all, perhaps it reflects a degree of egotism among some of our ‘democratic’ leaders.
I wonder if I can get a grant to study the use of the royal ‘We’ in response to your friend’s hypothesis?
😉
LikeLike
In Finnish language the verb already states who is doing the ‘doing’, and so you dont have to use the pronouns.
I can say in Finnish: menen = I go
I can also say : mina menen = I go
LikeLike
Damn it, you two! (asty and H) If only you’ve written just a wee bit earlier!
I have just sent him a three page lecture of the greek use of the word. I’ve completely forgotten about the royal we, though I had thought about it before I started writing and it would have been fantastic, H, if I had included your contribution as well!
Damn!
Perhaps he’ll write again. He’s a prof and the Chair at the Department of Psychology, Univ of Texas at Austin… and I hope he doesn’t frequent this pub or else I’m in the poo!
LikeLike
It will soon be necessary for our entire population to move to a newly discovered Earth-like planet of Alpha Centauri. We need all the social psychologists to go first to work out an adaptation program for us. This is such important work they need to go even before the telephone sanitisers.
LikeLike
At the risk of being accused of pedantry, Voice, I’m afraid I must point out that Alpha Centauri is NOT a planet, but rather a sun… though I’m not sure whether it is a similar type of sun to our own, and am rather pessimistic about the chances of finding an earth-type planet in orbit around it… But I think warmongers and politicians ought to go in the first ark; after all, someone needs to ‘pacify’ any alien natives and then organize them into a slave labour force for us to exploit, don’t they?
😉
LikeLike
The beauty of this plan, T2, is that it doesn’t matter whether there is an earth-type planet of Alpha Centauri, or not.
It suffices to suggest to a gaggle of social psychologists that there might be, and ask them to do some research into it. Having first taken care to establish some research grants in the fields of Prosocial Behaviours on Interstellar Spaceships and the Role of Social Cognition On Planetary Adaptation. I guarantee you that a number of them will prove that such a planet exists. Following their standard (pseudo) scientific methods we then ignore the rest and present the papers that show what we want them to at the next International Convention of Social Psychos.
They’ll be on the first space ark out of here. This approach has the drawback of leaving out the warmongers, but on the plus side most of the NSW Department of Education will follow them.
[And have no fear T2. Pedantry is the LAST thing I’d accuse you of in your ‘corrections’.]
LikeLike
Voice, you are far more devious than I had hitherto suspected…
Do I detect a faint trace of sarcasm in your final sentence? I realize that one or two of my ‘corrections’ have not been quite ‘correct’… but I do try you know… and I AM right sometimes…
😉
LikeLike
I suppose if I said I knew you were trying you’d accuse me of deviousness again (and if not why not)? 🙂
LikeLike
Amazing what one can insinuate with a couple of “quotation” marks! (or brackets) followed tightly by a “question” mark. Not to mention a “smiley!” ( 🙂 )
LikeLike
If you need all that you’re definitely doing something wrong atomou!
LikeLike
No Voice… if you said you knew I was trying, I’d suspect sarcasm again… the term ‘devious’ was used in reference to your ingenious plot to send social psychologists to Alpha Centauri regardless of whether or not there is an earth-type planet orbiting it to support them… Now THAT’S devious!
🙂
LikeLike
“… regardless of whether there is an earth-type planet to support them”
T2, you say that as if there were something wrong with it.
But it’s irrelevant anyway. You haven’t realised the full beauty/horror of my depths of deviousness. It would take several lifetimes to reach Alpha Centauri, it would be their descendants we are talking about. But I doubt they’d ever arrive. Think about it. An entire generation of children raised by no-one except social psychologists and members of the NSW Department of Education. How long would THAT society last?
LikeLike
Voice, Niccolo Machiavelli would be proud of you!
😉
LikeLike
I love the picture of the Little Red Hen. I’m sure Julia would laugh at it as well. I like Julia too, but I can’t understand why she had to go to New York for lessons in Education…(Gerard will take her to right places).
I feel sorry for the Farmer and his little Hen; there is soo much, almost too much to do. Ten years of neglect is not corrected overnight.
I think poor Obama is finding out the same.
LikeLike
We at MADGE regard the trip to the USA as a terrible omen for Australian education. As bad as the ABC installing parenting advice from hell&fire south east USA. As bad as Julia signing off on the nanotechnology education package written by a bunch of biotech stooges, telling the kids they’d be walkin to the moon on a carbon stairway in a few years, making carbon nanofibre models outa marshmallows.
We did walk past Julia in the halls of power, and her hair looked good that day.
LikeLike
And what’s more, a MADGE tried to talk a moment with Julia at a local event – she put up her hand, went face-dead, and walked past.
Hang on a minute… I’ve got a date banging saucepans outside her office with the midwives – forgot about that… it’s on Monday. These opportunities for wearing the pigs arms shirt just keep rolling in.
LikeLike
Hi Madeleine, was it you or Glenda who thought that Julia’s hair looked good…
I think Glenda’s scissors might be needed here; we might also have to tone down the colour somewhat when she becomes PM…it’s OK for time being!
LikeLike
H!
You leave my darling Julia’s hair alone, please. It’s simply gorgeous. Very… mouthwatering. I love the woman and I’d have her portraits all over my walls if only Mrs At weren’t so… prohibitive of that!
LikeLike
An egg is at least a more positive contribution to our so-called educational system than the heritage bequeathed to us by the Nameless One… Can she lay the ‘Golden Egg’ though? That’s the real question…
😉
LikeLike
Nah, they’ve gone and killed that one, asty!
Uneducated bastards!
LikeLike
The saddest thing of all about the demise of the goose that laid the golden egg, atomou, is that the poor creature died of starvation because her keepers were too stingey to spring for the price of the chookfood that would have kept it alive.
Ironically, Gerard has already commented adversely on the exorbitant price of chookfood…
😉
LikeLike