Horsin' Around
Don Coldsmith, Syndicated Columnist
Originally published 02:26 p.m., June 9, 2008
Updated 02:26 p.m., June 9, 2008
I’ve taught an adult Sunday school class for over 30 years. It’s a pretty unorthodox group and we often get far afield in the course of discussion. There’s a lot of room for personal opinion, but no attempt to ridicule anybody or hurt anyone’s feelings. I doubt that we’ve offended many, but there are other classes they could attend that are more conventional, if they prefer. All of this to explain how we arrived, one Sunday, at the point of hypnotizing chickens.
We were discussing the description of Moses as he tries, in the book of Exodus, to convince the Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave. God has given him some miracles to demonstrate that the power is there. Specifically, Moses can cause his walking stick to turn into a snake. but Pharaoh’s magicians and wise men demonstrate that THEY can do the same thing and accuse him of a trick. Now, I’m not questioning anyone’s belief about how Moses did this, but how did PHARAOH’S magicians manage to duplicate it?
I mentioned that somewhere I’d heard of a species of snake in that part of the world that can be hypnotized and stretched out perfectly straight. It would appear to be a walking stick. When it’s tossed down on the ground, as Moses did, it would waken suddenly and become active, a snake again. Pharaoh’s wise men would know about this and use it to discredit Moses’ demonstration if they could.
Other animals behave similarly in some circumstances as part of their adaptation for survival. Some respond to sounds, like the cobra in the snake charmer’s basket. Consider the alligator, who is a dead log until the right moment and then suddenly becomes a mountain of teeth. The possum “plays possum” to pretend he’s dead and so does the American Hog-nosed snake, who actually flops over on his back to play dead. (Turn him right side up; he’ll turn back over, just to make sure you’re convinced.).
In the course of all this, I mentioned to the class that hypnotizing that snake wouldn’t be all that hard. Probably, not any tougher job than hypnotizing a chicken. I got some very strange looks. Hypnotize a chicken!
I was a little bit surprised that in that group, with a very broad range of experience, nobody seemed to know about chicken hypnosis.
Until the present generation, every farm family and many families in town had a flock of laying hens to provide eggs. (I still think that a bowl of big brown-shelled eggs is much more appealing than today’s mass-produced chalk-colored offering). Of course, the kids in the family helped feed the chickens and often played with them. Maybe even took a young rooster over to the neighbors’ for an impromptu cockfight behind the barn when their mothers weren’t watching.
But, back in my own childhood, my grandfather taught me how to calm a chicken so it was easier to handle. Birds are very much affected by light and darkness, he pointed out. Except for night birds, most consider darkness a cue to sleep. Some, he said, even sleep with their heads under their wings, to provide darkness. (I’m not sure about that one, but maybe — ).
Anyway, he demonstrated for me that if you pick up a chicken and tuck its head under a wing, holding it in place, the bird will stop struggling and remain quiet. It was true. Motion, too, affects the bird’s balance. He swung the chicken, head covered, in three moderately quick circles and then released the head from under the wing. The bird stared, looking a bit confused and stupid. Well, sort of hypnotized. (Chickens often look confused and stupid, but this was a special case).
Now he gently set the chicken on its feet, but with the tip of its beak on a chalk mark he’d made on the flagstone walk. It would stay that way until it thunders, Grandpa said. Well, it didn’t. Something startled it in 10 or 15 minutes and it retreated, cackling indignantly. All this is useful information, but actually it’s pretty seldom that I’m called upon to hypnotize a chicken anymore.
See you down the road.
jayhawker (anonymous) says...
Many years ago as a young soldier I went through a survival course. In the course, the Army Rangers taught us how to hypnotize chickens. It really worked. All we did was hold the chicken's beak to the ground and use a stick to draw a straight line from his beak straight out about two feet. The chicken would lay there looking at the line. It was amazing.
June 10, 2008 at 9:13 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )