OMNIVOROUS CHOOKS

Today I discovered that chickens are omnivores.

True! My friend sent me a video of some chickens chomping down mice and frogs.

Omnivores! Not just farmyard grain or factory-fed nutrient seeds. They eat meat, chickens... actually eat meat.

I still can’t quite believe it. It’s like the time I found out that Edinburgh is further West than Bristol, or that Lady Jane Grey, the “nine day Queen” was queen for nineteen days, and there’s no donkey in the nativity.

Unbelievable.

I told Shuko. I thought maybe she’d tell me it was another one of those things that everybody knew, and laugh at me for being 41 and not knowing how chickens work.

“Shuko,” I said, turning to her on my wheelie chair, “Did you know that chickens...” (dramatic pause - it’s how I roll)... “eat meat?”

She didn’t. She was as shocked as I was! She suggested visiting a farm with some wafer-thin slices of ham, just to see. I wondered whether that would confuse any pigs in the vicinity, but I was still feeling reassured that I wasn’t the only one for whom this might be big news. Me and Shuko at least had learned something.

All those trips to KFC, all that roast chicken I ate, all the chicken soup I had when I was poorly... all could have been boiled and battered from the bones of a vicious meat-eater! Cows, pigs, sheep... they don’t eat meat do they? I kind of thought it might be a distinction of which animals were considered acceptable for the table - we eat animals that eat plants, and the rest we make for pets - but no? Really?

Well if you thought like I did, then step away from the chickens, my friends... unless you also want to chow down on cats and owls and snakes and the like. For the chooks have been secretly scoffing amphibians and rodents, since eggs was eggs.

I don’t know what I’m going to find out next. Perhaps there’s lipstick in Krispy Kreme doughnuts or something. Or maybe the secret ingredient in Linda McCartney’s sausages is plastic, or fish scales, or pork-pie jelly. Shudder.

Anyway. One thing’s for sure: I can’t quite look at a beady-eyed chicken in the same way again.