Piker Press β€” Weekly Journal of Arts and Literature
April 27, 2026

Cry Fowl

Good thing they're delicious...

Sometimes I think the wild chickens on the island of Kaua’i have interbred sufficiently to have created a new species of ADHD or ADD fowl. Can you imagine 450,000 chickens running around harassing 75,000 locals and entertaining another 30,000 or so tourists each day? Apparently, with the freeing of domestic chickens during the 1982 Iwa hurricane and again during the 1992 Iniki hurricane, the crossbreeds now rule the roost, so to speak. This has created a four- or five-to-one chicken to human ratio. Worldwide the ratio is β€œonly” three-to-one, chickens to humans. With the world human population now surpassing seven billion, this leads inexorably to the conclusion that there are perhaps twenty-one billion chickens ranged against us humans. Add to this number all of their avian brethren and, as Alfred Hitchcock foretold, we are doomed, doomed to death by fowl insurrection!

Article © Richard D. Hartwell. All rights reserved.
Published in the April 10, 2023 issue .
Image(s) are public domain.
More by Richard D. Hartwell → More essays → Full issue →
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