Escaping Chickens

At some time in the Christmas break we all get the feeling that, for just a few seconds, we need a break. It is the clutter that gets to us. We love the family, the food and the drink. The conversation is stimulating and pleasantly family orientated – peppered with lots of: `Do you remember?’ It is just the clutter that gets on our nerves.


Every Christmas we are offered our fair share of escape stories. We are all used to seeing grey figures crawl out of tunnels in the middle of the night. I think we even saw a film this Christamas where chickens were trying to escape from a prison camp. This was the sequel to the chicken escape.


In the prison on the Chicken Farm a group of chickens escaped from a tunnel they dug at the rate of four metres a week. The escape took a long time because they were nearly discovered by the dog. When they rushed their work three metres of the tunnel would cave in.


Finally one night they managed to escape.


When the guards measured the tunnel, they found that it was sixteen metres long. For how many weeks did the chickens dig?


Like all questions of this nature we rally need to look at the intent. Are we expected to draw a little sketch in our minds and picture chickens scratching away at the earth night after night? Should we worry about how the chickens disposed of the sail? Was there a natural leader among the chickens? The answer, as you all have worked out immediately, was that it took them thirteen weeks. How do we explain that?

“Ask your mother. I have to deal with all this clutter.”

“Ask your father. I have to deal with all the clutter he left behind”

“Oh, I don’t know. After all it is just after Christmas.”