Unveil new pecking order as the chicken are innocent

Since I ventured into the chicken business in this column last week, little did I know that feathers would come flying hither and thither all week.

And, no, am not going to crack some joke about the birds and the bees or why our fine feathered flock tried to cross the road or throw clichés about chickens coming home to roost. Neither am I going to get a certain western Kenya community salivating about a certain gizzard delicacy only found in a sand-chomping rooster.

I just know that chicken have suffered a great deal. Have you espied how they are trussed and transported hanging upside down on bicycles, Proboxes and all manner of dodgy public transport?

Have you no care for the way the Chicken Kingdom is dreading the coming month of Noel? Even those who rarely get to taste a morsel of the chick-i-dee swear by all manner of forefathers and use Jesus’s birthday to dispatch them to their maker on the hallowed altar of Christmas!

You see, we Africans are a very welcoming bunch and measure respect by the size and gender of chicken we choose to slaughter for our guests. Some folks use every excuse of the occasional visitor to wring their scrawny necks to show their appreciation of the visitor.

It was in my younger days a privilege to be sent scurrying after one of the domestic fowl under the maize barn, tripping over the homestead hedge, into the neighbours’ yards until the exhausted and exasperated bird-brain gave up.

We would then proudly bring it back to the compound to face the knifeman while we picked weeds, blackjack and other flora out of our hair and clothes.

Our love for chicken is so sincere and that is why we sported long faces for three years upon leaning what was happening in faraway Asia some time back.

Can you imagine that the entire continent became a chicken No-Go Zone after they bred them in their millions in cramped conditions until a deadly Avian or Bird Flu wiped out generations of the beloved clucking pet?

I cried every time I saw mountains of feathered folk being doused with paraffin and reduced to environmentally-threatening smoke. Kwani Nema has not opened a branch office in these cities now that we are nationally looking East?

Qailgate Scam

Luckily for them, Kenyans took it upon themselves to let the Malthusian theory work and avoided chicken for a while and branched out into the business of tending to their tinier cousins, the quail.

Unfortunately, the eggs quail produced were too spotted and because they had been produced too hastily, the pyramid of eggs collapsed, spilling Aloe Vera-flavoured yolk all over Kenya. Many a quail-preneur is still mourning the loss of the biashara that was supposed to make them kwachua some serious chapaa.

The jury, however, is still out regarding the ongoing commission of inquiry into the Quailgate Scandal.

Even the Ombudsman is livid upon discovering that a whole secondary school principal had developed an aversion to chalk and was actively pumping her birds full of chicken marsh so they could lay big oval eggs that she would sell to her school. And considering there are no procurement procedures in place, what was there to stop the said Teacher Number 1 setting her own price?

To compound matters, some urbanites suffer selective amnesia. While they are so infuriated that their blood boils at the sight of a woman in a short dress or skirt, they forget that this is a matter so trivial that it did not bother the late Senator Mutula Kilonzo one bit.

The same fellows are not averse at unashamedly stripping chicken down to their goose pimples, sticking a stake through them, worthy of a crucifixion and letting the full nakedness of a chicken that has bothered all its life to grow enough feathers to cover its anatomy!

They call these pornographic portrayal of our birds kuku sama (since they somersault endlessly for the voyeuristic pleasure of passersby outside shop windows! What depravity is this? Where is Kenya Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals?

Seriously, now that grown men are jumping about screaming blue murder, waving sworn affidavits and distancing themselves from the Chickengate Scam, someone must come out and speak for the chickens’ rights and start a social media page dedicated to exposing all Deadbeat Chicken Snatchers, failure to which there will be no more roosters waking up villagers in Kenya’s countryside and violent street demonstrations could rock the fragile economies of Western Kenya.

We the Gallus gallus domesticus taxpayers, Tunaomba serikali itusikilize within the 21 days it takes to hatch the next egg or so, or else...  

We must clear the unblemished reputation of our two-legged, but winged domestic pets. Count me in.