Death: A Chicken Report Where no Death Occurs

 Death

By: J. Annaliese Hawkins 

Based on true events, (based is the key word here)

“Anna!  Time to take care of the animals,”  my mom reminded me.  

“Alright!”  I replied, irritated.  I grudgingly put on my coat, checked for water containers (there was one) and grabbed the egg basket.  

My mood changed dramatically as it often does when I step into the cheek kissing wind and dark starry night.  I glided down the hill as if I was on a midnight stroll with some cute guy. (Nobody in particular was going through my head….)* Then, out of nowhere, death stared me in the eyes and smiled cruelly.  The red eyes were piercing my soul like fiery darts of hades, snapping me out of my, I might say, lovely daydream.

I opened my mouth to scream, but found my voice choked up in fear.  For once it had not been the goats that had scared me, but a large, fat, ugly, lopsided rat with red eyes.  I looked around frantically to see if there was a stick or something I could use to scare it away, but to my avail I found nothing.  Instead, I turned to my knowledge from reading lots of Nancy Drew books, and got ready to swallow my fear and make as much commotion** as possible.

Feeling uneasy, I slowly, but loudly, advanced.  

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It was gone.  I had only needed to stomp my feet once or twice and it wobbled off.  I hadn’t wanted it to go into the coop so I looked around frantically using the powerful flashlight to survey the area.  Nothing.  I assumed it had just waddled off into the surrounding bushes, but I couldn’t be sure.  Checking the coop for any sign of lopsided rats, I simultaneously counted six chickens.  Fortunately no more dead ones.  Despite the fact there was still no sign of the oversized rats, I rapidly closed up the goats and sprinted up the hill.  Fortunately I had tended to the animals a bit sooner that evening, so I relayed my story to Mom, she was freaking out.  Because Dad was in meetings, we had to wait up a bit to relay the story to him.  

He took one moment for a thought to occur and said simply, “I think it was opossum.” 

So now you know, death is simply an opossum staring you in the eyes.

Footnotes

* Actually, that’s not completely true...

** I challenge you to look up synonyms for noise.  Some of the results may make you laugh.