Most of us have coworkers that we dislike.  Some of them snarf in the coffee urn, some corner you in your cubicle and mooch off your life force like annoyingly boorish vampires, others merely spend all afternoon talking loudly on the speakerphone.  I am not so lucky, for I work with some most disagreeable individuals who incessantly loaf around, producing nothing of value, try to gather inside information by eavesdropping on important meetings, take three hour lunch breaks and last but not least, flee from squirrels and poop all over the sidewalk.  Who, you may ask are these dreadful fellow employees of mine?  They are, quite literally, chickens, each with their own unique flavor of evil and lack of useful skills (during a time when we’re on a very tight budget, no less!).  Follow me now, won’t you?  As we learn more about these Annoying Chickens of Henricus!

 

            First, we have Henry, the rooster.  Cock of the walk, he is also the pure an putreficent incarnation of evil in this world.  I can hardly think of where to begin as I ponder the depths of his depravity.  He is both vengeful and cowardly, an almost palpable pall of darkness hangs over him, granting him, it almost seems, a strange cadaverous aura of grandeur.  Forever beating the tar out of his harem like an impotent sheik, he flees at the very sight of a squirrel in the chicken coop and quakes beneath the junipers whenever a hawk draws near.  He randomly runs into blazing fires, and then goes mad when you chase him from the flames.  He draws curiously near when you brandish an axe, but flees like the very gates of Hell itself were flung open behind him if you shake a blanket at him.  Recently, he’s developed a case of termites or some such thing in his legs, and we fear that we’ll just have to cut off his legs and hope that his new ones grow in straight enough for him to gimp around on until we can build him a little Professor X hoverchair.  He is given to sudden fits of running off of the bluff, yet one more suicidal tendency that has yet, alas, to be his undoing.

 

Next, there’s Kate, the smallest of the group, she’s the only one that ever lays any eggs, a virtue she more than compensates for by having the most insufferable case of wanderlust ever to drive a chicken abroad.  Rarely does a day pass that we don’t hear Henry’s plaintive yet loathsome cry as yet again Kate wanders far afield in search of worms or shiny objects.  Sometimes for up to an hour on end, his piercing call will shatter the tranquility of Henricus, until at last he realizes that she’s only just behind that tree over there.  At least then all present get to watch the ensuing smackdown, as Henry flies (figuratively speaking, of course) into a livid and all-consuming rage, like I do whenever I think about how Ben Affleck pollutes the face of the Earth by his very existence.

 

Jackie is the largest and most useless of the hens, frequently getting stuck in the vegetable garden fence.  Her only natural defense is being too fat to be carried away by a bald eagle, and playing dead when threatened.  Unfortunately, she rarely keeps the act up for more than five seconds, so usually I’m not lulled into a false sense of dead chicken perception.  Usually.

 

Finally there’s Farah.  She suffers from a terminal case of Ugmo, an unfortunate condition which makes her look so freaky that decent people recoil from her in horror.  Also, she’s a walking toxic waste hazard (I’ll leave the details to your imagination).

 

So those are the abominable Hell chickens which whom I work (The Abominable Hell Chickens, might I add, would be a totally sweet name for a band).  Stay tuned for further updates about them, especially when Henry finally loses his baby legs.