Chickens

by Garret Tufte

A long, long time ago, I worked at a chicken factory. We pumped out chickens by the crate-full. Incredible work of engineering, really. They worked on it for years, and it got done, I was first in line. They said you had to have a degree, the tiniest bit of science understandin’ to show you were more than a bum off the street. Course I barely finished high school, as it was called in them days. Still, they took me in, cleaned me up, trained me down, and put me in the driver’s seat of that darn factory.

Work was exciting, not because I really had anything to do, but ‘cuz I got to watch the magic, every day. The factory was split into input, manufact, and output. I was right in the middle. I took watch over the processor. The chick-e-mater, we called it. Standin’ fifty-foot high and a football field long. I could see the damn thing one side to the other. Course I had screens to give me a good look at the specifics. The sludge comin’ in from the input line, scooped out of the trains bringin’ it in. Anythin’ organic, scraped off the bottom barrel. Water tubes comin’ alongside. It all spilled into the vat, a funnel-lookin’ thing, takin’ it all in.

Then, well, I don’t know what. Two-hundred foot of black machinery, steam pots, tubes pumpin’ jelly, whirly-birds, and god-knows. It all ended with a spit chute pointin’ up, and guess what come out: chickens! Every two seconds a chicken would come poppin’ out, cluckin’ and flappin’ to beat hell. He’d shoot ‘em to a big steel cage, openin’ when the time was right, and crashin’ back together. Them birds would sometimes try flyin’ out at the last minute, but that gate would come squashin’ down on ‘em. Ha, me and the boys would laugh: them chickens was born sooner than yesterday, and they try to outsmart us! Damn dumb birds.

I watched that sludge and them chickens for fifteen years. Didn’t get no pension though. Factory closed when they came in with talk of how “people don’t wanna eat chicken no more” and “too much chicken out there already”. Bunch of Ivy-league bullcock if you ask me.

Now? Well I been doin’ pretty well for myself. Wife and kids took off to do whatever they’re doin’. Ain’t seen ‘em in few years now. But I been takin’ to these new incentives they got for them surveys. And get this, all I gotta do is watch the tee-vee here and tell ‘em what I think. Easiest job a bro ever did know...