The Secret World of Chickens

          It loomed in the backyard like a shrine. There were many other things out there, but it was the one thing in the yard that was forbidden. I had to check it out. After all, what did the grown-ups know? They obviously forgot what it was like to have a five year old brain.
          The center of my attention was the chicken coop. It was a great mystery to me just where those eggs came from, and what the chickens did in there all day long. One day, I decided it was time to find out.
          A wire fence surrounded the wooden building. It did a great job at keeping the chickens in, although it failed miserably at keeping small children out. Squeezing myself into the dirt, I wiggled under it.
          I had watched the chickens many times. Mostly, they walked around pecking the ground. When they wanted to go inside, they went through a small door on the side of the building. Today, the chickens were all inside. As satisfying as it was to be on this side of the fence, I knew I had to go in.
          The tiny door was a tight fit, but I managed to squeeze through it. An eerie hush fell over the chickens as I stood in their midst. The building looked bigger once inside. The air was hot and stuffy. A sour smell burned my eyes and nose. Light filtered in through cracks in the walls, casting beams across the hard dirt floor. Small piles of hay laid in the corners. Did I mention feathers? Feathers of every size lay strewn across the floor, randomly rolled together in small drifts. There even seemed to be feathers in the air. My throat tickled as I breathed the thick air. In one of these piles of hay and feathers was an egg. Slowly, I crept nearer.
          Crouching to get a closer look, I poked the egg with my finger. It was a dirty white color and covered, in spots, with green chicken poo. I had seen the eggs my mom had bought at the store, and this was not like those at all. I didn’t think I could ever eat anything that was this dirty.
          I let the egg stay in it’s place and turned my attention to the chickens. They sat on perches that were along the wall, watching me with indifference. The silence made me feel like I had walked in on some secret chicken meeting. They peered over their beaks at me, as I intruded on their space. They seemed almost arrogant, watching me watching them. I realized that I wasn’t going to learn the secret of the eggs, after all.
          I squeezed back out and under the fence. I would have gotten away with it all, except for a few details. Rather, it was more like many details, many crawling details. My brief visit into the world of the chickens had introduced me to chicken lice.
          I could feel every inch of my skin moving. I wanted to scratch it all at once. My animated attempts at trying to relieve the itch caught my mother’s attention. She soon found out why. I was ceremoniously dumped into the bathtub. After much vigorous scrubbing, I came away clean. I wasn’t punished for my curiosity. The lice and exaggerated bathing seemed to be enough.
          I never learned where eggs came from that day. I did learn respect for the chickens and let them keep their lice all to themselves.