(NOTE: The following offering is pure fiction. No chickens, roosters, donkeys, parakeets, or speckled trout were harmed in its production.)

I always figured I would wind up doing something remarkable, like disprove the Pythagorean theorem, or find a cure for chemistry.

Imagine my chagrin upon receiving in my mailbox a summons to show cause why I should not be disheveled for keeping more than six live chickens on a city lot.

It would be mortifying to go down in history as a poultry scofflaw, especially considering I don’t even like Buffalo wings.

Surely they’ve mistaken me for the guy down in the next block who’s always playing Green Acres on his brown furlong. Many’s the bright morning I’ve spotted him standing out in his driveway in vest and tie, seeming about to sing a hymn of praise to The American Farmer. If you ask me, he’s just the type of enthusiast who would breed an egregious brood.

There was a time when the city fathers had too much on their minds to bother with a thing like this. It’s not as if I had a rooster for my flock. That is, if I even had a flock—which I most definitely do not.

I have not a single hen. Why would I get a rooster? Those things go off at four a.m. and can be heard for miles around. 

We once stayed at a vineyard in Tuscany where the vintner kept some sweet little donkeys. Each dawn, at the first ray, they brayed a paean to the sun god, demonstrating why they are called “mountain canaries.” At least they were cute, unlike any rooster you ever met.

But I digress.

Who You Gonna Call?

The point is, I didn’t know what to do. So I called on Milo Bung.

My old schoolmate Milo—fourth cousin to Slats Grobnik and a direct descendant of King Æthelred the Unready—has a big reputation as the nemesis of all officials. He once reduced a building inspector to a heap of wilted artichoke leaves in under thirty seconds.

I don’t know how he does it, but in this hour of crisis, I want Milo on my side. Nonetheless, I hesitated several moments on Milo’s doorstep. 

Finally, I took a deep breath and pressed the button.

The great man himself flung open the door. He was clad in smoking jacket, ascot, and waders. In a brief second, he discerned my status. Milo always could read me like a book.

“Hmm,” he frowned. “Well, you’d better come in, then.”

He withdrew from the door and led me through endless dim corridors to his sanctum sanctorum. I mean, his den. 

Fly rods, woven wicker creels, hand nets, and all the impedimenta of the compleat angler lay strewn over every horizontal and vertical surface. 

“Sit anywhere,” Milo said.

“Going fishing?”

Milo smiled. “Thought I’d sneak up on a few of those speckly little trout things. Season opens on Saturday.” 

“May their finny tribe increase,” I replied. “Perhaps I could just set this tackle box on the floor for a moment.”

“Be my guest.”

“I am,” I reminded him. I shifted the tackle box and sat.

Down to Business

“Now,” Milo said. “What’s on your mind?”

I opened my mouth to speak.

“Don’t tell me. It’s the old excess urban fowl runaround, isn’t it?”

I stared at him. “How did you know?”

“Oh, they’ve got a little calendar down at City Hall. Last week in April, it’s time to hassle homeowners about hens.”

I whipped out my notice and brandished it in his face. “Look here!” I said with righteous anger. “I don’t even keep a parakeet, let alone a chicken.”

“Utterly irrelevant.”

“Is that so?” I huffed and puffed as he gazed on me with pity. 

“Well,” I said after a decent interval. “What should I do?”

“Ignore it.”

“Ignore it? An official summons from City Hall?”

Milo nodded, fiddling with a vintage Kaywoodie briar pipe.

“How can I ignore it?”

“You’ll be a sucker and a fool if you don’t.”

“Explain.”

Genius At Work

“When they send you a provocation like this, they mean for you to quail and quiver. It gives them shivers of joy, like a male grunion at the height of the run.” He tapped his Kaywoodie against the heel of his hand and dislodged a few shreds of stale tobacco into a large glass ashtray. “See, they want to get you on the run.”

“What good does ignoring the summons do?”

“It lures them into overplaying their hand.”

“How so?”

Milo chuckled. “They will descend on you with a flying squad of chicken inspectors, most likely backed up by a SWAT team.”

“A SWAT team?”

“Exactly. If you’re lucky, they’ll stage a three a.m. raid.”

“You call that lucky?”

“I should say so!” Milo packed fresh tobacco into the bowl of the pipe, tamping it down with his index finger. “If they make enough fuss, you’ve got them just where you want them.”

“I want them nowhere near my house, is where I want them!”

“Nevertheless, there they are. And no excess chickens to be found on said premises. You really don’t have more than six, do you?”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY CHICKENS AT ALL!!”

“No need to raise your voice. Now, it would help if you could arrange for Biff Brash and his Action TV News Crew to be there with cameras and lights—lots of lights—when the SWAT Team arrives.” 

“Must we go to these lengths, Milo? At last, sir, have you no shame?”

He sucked on the stem of his pipe. “They’ll be so worried about a lawsuit for false prosecution—you’ll be exempt from even mowing your front lawn for at least two years.” 

It’s All Upshot From Here

I stared at my old friend, not in a warm and cherishing way. “Aren’t you going to light that thing?” I asked.

His mouth twisted in horror around the stem of his Kaywoodie. “Light it? Start a conflagration in the house? Muriel would kill me.” 

This from the fearless facer of SWAT teams.

Guess my chickens have come home to roost. I’ll just quietly pay the fine.

NOTE TO POTENTIALLY CONFUSED READERS: What you have just read should have been posted on April Fool’s Day. It is pure fantasy, every bit of it. Not one scintilla of fact. Except the donkeys. I distinctly remember the donkeys.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer