Fun fact: chickens are literally dinosaurs. They are direct descendants of the same group of dinosaurs as the T-rex which survived the mass extinction event. It’s likely that the T-rex also had similar feathers, but early drawings of them didn’t account for this and Hollywood decided to just keep depicting bald dinosaur hide in films after this discovery.
And who didn’t love those unrealistic dinosaur cartoons as a kid? I still cry thinking about the Land Before Time movies. But I also happen to associate childhood with chickens!
I spent a lot of time as a kid on a farm out in western Virginia. My godfather decided he wanted to raise chickens, so he bought some books on the topic (I don’t think he owned a computer or cell phone at the time) and learned everything there was to know about them. I flipped through pages of dense catalogues with him, staring in awe at the many exotic varieties of the birds. We found out there are show chickens – yes, like show dogs – which are bred just to look beautiful. Silkies are a common show chicken variety with their light, fluffy little feathers that cover their feet and turn their heads into puffballs.
But my favorite variety, which we raised quite a few of, was the Rhode Island Red. It’s a beautiful bird, especially the roosters, with their deep reddish brown feathers and shiny black tail plumage. The hens lay brown eggs – the color of which is not indicative of anything other than the variety of chicken. We raised chickens that laid naturally pink, speckled, white, brown and even green eggs. I brought a dozen differently colored eggs to school once for “Show and Tell” and got in trouble for letting the kids eat them at lunch.
A lot of chickens, especially the ones bred for meat, are not very smart. I used to help another farmer who raised such a breed spray his chickens with a hose in the summer, because they would walk out of their nice cool coop and stare directly into the sun until they died from heat fatigue. If a chicken escapes the fence, forget about it – it’s already been eaten by a fox. But the Rhode Island Reds were a little smarter than the rest, which is another reason we kept them around.
Anyway, I hope you have as much fun with this one as I did making it. The unrealistic “dinosaur colors” and the proud, confused looking rooster really bring me back to my very specific childhood. The next time you’re eating dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, now you know you’re actually eating dinosaurs.
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