A longish tale – but true
When I was a maintenance electrician for a brewery I worked with a mate in a pub in the South London sticks of Chessington
Halfway through one afternoon, may mate disappeared and eventually returned with a freshly slaughtered free range, chicken he had bought in a neighbouring farm
Being partial, I asked him to get me one – he promised he would on our next visit.
I forgot about it until I was reminded sharply a few weeks later.
In those days, I was terrified of the dentist and suffered badly for my stupidity with abscesses – one day, my kindly, elderly boss told me of a beautiful woman dentist practising locally – he referred to her as "the tooth-puller with the big boobies"
He persuaded me to visit her and I eventually agreed on the condition that she would 'knock me out' rather than give me a 'local'
This entailed Pat driving from work to get me up when the treatment was over.
I informed my mate that I would not be available an told him why (foolishly forgetting he was a practical joker)
As arranged, Pat picked me up, as arranged and dropped me off home, where I staggered up our three storey winging flight of stairs to our top flat and fell asleep in a chair
Some time later I was woken by the doorbell and staggered down the stairs to find nobody there, but a cardboard box on the step; I brought it in and closed the door.
When I opened the box a live chicken flew out and for the next hour ran up and down the stairs until finally I got it back in the box.
When Pat got home she demanded to know why there was chicken shit on every stair up to our flat
The chicken was given to our kindly ground-floor neighbours who gave it free run of the garden for the rest of its days
Never looked a chicken in the face since
Jim Carroll