the Unexpressed Advantage

Today Joash came out and relayed to me the importance of us having chickens.

“We should have chickens, that way we can have eggs.”

My reply, “We’re not getting chickens.”

Joash: “It’s so much cheaper…”

I naturally replied, “Joash, you don’t need to get chickens, we can just buy eggs from safeway, you get so many more and they probably don’t cost much more than chicken feed.”

At this point, for some reason, I didn’t want to rain on his parade anymore. So after a moment of silence I offered up the obvious reality that if we had 4 chickens, I figured that would mean that we could both have omelets pretty much every day. He, having clearly thought this through already, proceeded to fill me in on more of the details. I said I supposed it would be alright, as long as we could have a dog and let our dog occasionally eat one of the chickens. Joash informed me of my error in that actually it would be “we” who would be eating the chickens. He then let me in on more details, including the nature of the fence he would build, the type of coop they would live in, and the fact that they would be our “pets” except for that their just chickens. I then commented on how chickens are quite ugly, and he affirmed that fact.

Then Joash further explained why he was sure that God wanted him to have chickens. Namely, that having chickens would attract various predators such as raccoons and skunks to our little yard, which would necessitate him buying a shotgun so that he could stumble out late in the evening in his pajamas and yell, “get away from my chickens!” This amused me, I asserted that I would then need to purchase a bow and arrow to shoot at the raccoons. As we both retreated to our bedrooms, he mentioned to me one final comment:

“And then we would have AIDS”

“AIDS?” I replied, “Why would we want AIDS?”

Joash rebuttled, “EGGS!”

Ahh.. Oh yeah. Eggs.

: Dray :