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Rampage of the Giant Chickens

John Ragusa

    “I would have beaten John F. Kennedy for the presidency if they hadn’t made me look so cruddy for the debate,” Gordon Crothers said.
    “Father, how many times do I have to tell you? You’re not Richard Nixon!” Delilah Crothers said.
    “I know who I am!” Gordon hollered. “I’m the President of the United States, and I am not a crook. No one can prove that I am.”
    Poor Gordon was 82 years old and senile. He thought he was Richard Nixon in the final year of his presidency. His daughter Delilah was saddened to see him in this condition. She took care of Gordon with the help of her husband, Calvin.
    It wasn’t an easy thing to do. She had to put up with his outbursts, which took place each and every day. Gordon was terribly confused; sometimes he didn’t know who he was. He had seen a psychiatrist, but the doctor couldn’t help cure him. He said Gordon was too far gone for effective treatment.
    Delilah went along with Gordon for a while, letting him think he was Richard Nixon. But when she saw how much anxiety it was making for him, she decided to inform him that he wasn’t the former president. But he wouldn’t have any of it. He insisted that he was Nixon. He was pathetically delusional. Delilah prayed to God that Gordon would get better.
    Gordon was as paranoid as Nixon had been. He was suspicious about his cabinet. He was leery about the press, too. He partially blamed them for his fall from grace. He thought everyone was against him.
    Delilah wished there was some kind of cure for what Gordon had. She knew there had to be an answer. Gordon simply couldn’t tolerate his paranoia much longer.
    “Everyone’s against me,” Gordon told Delilah.
    “That’s just what you think,” she said. “No one is plotting to do you harm. It’s all in your mind.”
    “What can I do about it?”
    “You have to face reality,” Delilah said. “You have to realize that you’re not really Richard Nixon. You’re Gordon Crothers.”
     “I know that I’m Richard Nixon. I’m no one else.”
    “You just think that. It isn’t true.”
    “Don’t tell me it isn’t true. I know for a fact that it is.”
    “Okay, you win,” Delilah said. “You’re Nixon.”
    Gordon nodded. “You’re darned right I am.”
    “Are you going to resign as president?”
    “I guess I have no choice but to do that.”
    “It’s probably the best thing you can do.”
    “What else can I do?” Gordon asked. “Everyone expects me to step down, so I should do it.”
    “That might be the right course of action,” Delilah said. “If you don’t resign, then you’ll be impeached.”
    “I won’t let that happen. No one is going to run me out of office.”
    Delilah let it go at that. She didn’t want to upset Gordon.
    Later on, Calvin was sitting with Gordon in the living room.
    “I suppose the American people mistrust me,” Gordon said. “They think I’m corrupt. Well, I’m right because I am the president. I can do anything I want to do.”
    Calvin decided to humor the old man.
    “Of course you can do as you please,” he said. “You’re entitled to it.”
    “I think I’ll probably be impeached, though. Everyone wants me out of office. They don’t realize how important I am to this country.”
    “I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyway, I’m going to see how Delilah is doing with her cake.”
    “Okay.” Gordon went to the porch.
    Calvin walked into the kitchen. He came up to Delilah and said, “How are you doing, honey?”
    “Just fine,” Delilah said. “The cake’s in the oven. It should be done soon.”
    “Your father isn’t getting any better. He still thinks he’s Richard Nixon.”
    “I don’t think he’ll ever get better. His mind is almost completely gone.”
    “Maybe we should put him in an asylum.”
    “I don’t think we’ll have to do that as long as he doesn’t harm anyone.”
    “We’ll keep him here and look after him, then.”
    “I’m glad you’re willing to take care of Father. The poor man has lost his sanity.”
    Out on the porch, Gordon watched a few cars drive by. Then he saw a giant chicken walk down the street.
    He couldn’t believe his eyes at first. He rubbed them and looked again. He was seeing a giant chicken!
    He rolled his wheelchair into the living room.
    “Delilah, I just saw a giant chicken outside,” he said.
    “Father, you’re just having another one of your delusions,” Delilah said.
    “But I know what I saw!”
    “You only thought you saw it.”
    “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “But that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “I think you’re tired. You need to rest.”
    “I don’t want to rest.”
    Delilah didn’t know what to do. Gordon really believed that he saw a giant chicken; that was the sad part. She couldn’t tell him he imagined it because he’d think that she considered him crazy. She didn’t want him to think that. But what exactly could she do about it?
    “You can go out front and see what I’m talking about,” Gordon said.
    “There aren’t any giant chickens, Father,” Delilah said. “They simply don’t exist.”
     “Yes, they do. I saw one of them.
    “Let me bring you into your room.”
    Gordon reluctantly allowed Delilah to take him to his room. Then she joined Calvin in the living room.
    “You’ll never believe what I just saw when I looked out the window,” Calvin told Delilah.
    “What was it?” she asked.
    “I saw a giant chicken walking by.”
    “That’s what Father just said! I thought it was a delusion.”
    “It was real, all right. For some reason, there was an outsized chicken on our street.”
    “It’s amazing. It’s too outrageous to be true!”
    The couple went out front and were stunned to see chickens as big as houses on the street.
    “Where on Earth did they come from?” Delilah said.
    Calvin shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    The chickens took huge strides forward. They made sounds that were deafening. When they walked, the ground shook with their impact. One of them nibbled on a power line. They crunched cars with their huge feet and bit people with their beaks. Another one of them flattened a stop sign. The citizens were terrified of these feathered monsters who were demolishing things all over the place. They were creating a path of destruction everywhere they went. Animals that were harmless when small became dangerous when they were big.
    The chickens would knock down sheds when they trotted over them. They caused millions of dollars in destruction.
    On the evening news, Calvin and Delilah heard about what had happened: A leak at a nearby nuclear power plant caused chickens at a local hatchery to increase in size, and now they were wreaking havoc around town.
    People went to church and prayed that the chickens could be prevented from causing more harm to anyone. Some folks were arming themselves with rifles and shooting the birds to protect their lives. Bullets were not killing the beasts, however.
    Calvin watched helplessly as the tree in his front yard was torn down by a chicken. Another fowl spread its wings and broke the window of his bedroom. The big, bad birds were unleashing their fury, and no one could stop them.
    Then Grover Manlove, a chemist, came up with a solution. The chickens had to eat to survive, and what they ate was chicken feed. If the people could mix cyanide with chicken feed and give it to the chickens to eat, they would be poisoned and they’d die.
    The citizens thought this was a good idea. So they filled a dump truck with chicken feed and cyanide, drove it to the hatchery, and dumped it there. The chickens returned to the place and consumed the mixture of food and poison. It entered their digestive systems and they slowly died. With their passing, the danger they had posed was eliminated.
    The nightmare was now over, thanks heavens. But everyone in town would never forget the rampage of the giant chickens.

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