“This butterfly net won’t hurt you, little chick! Here little, chick, chick. Come here.”

When you hear yourself saying something like this audibly, you will soon begin wondering exactly when—day, hour, minute—you crossed that strange, invisible line between “nice lady” and “the nut.”

One minute you’re being born, feet first or breech, just like those babies they left under a bush on some primal savannah for the hyenas to eat, because everyone knows that proper babies come head first, and it’s the contrary ones that come feet first, so it was tradition to get rid of those feet-first-babies under a bush before they could start real trouble—one minute you’re being born—wrong, and the next minute you’re chasing chickens with a butterfly net.

It’s then that you ask yourself, “How did this happen? Why did the dignity train leave without me? When did it leave? How come Hollywood can’t make movies that don’t preach up a storm about everything? Why is that last sentence a double negative?”

Then the chicken you’re chasing with a butterfly net darts right, but you were set to dodge left, and the five-pound Yorkshire Terrier that Santa brought to your grand daughter, but somehow he dropped off at your house by accident, joins in the chase and darts both right and left arriving at the screaming, fleeing chicken first, and bites it on the head, making you wonder why chicken retrieval and recovery has somehow fallen under your job description.

Before you can say, “Leave that baby under that bush over there,” you’ve caught Ploodle, the terrier, in your butterfly net. His wet little nose presses against the green netting. The chicken’s head is in his mouth. The chicken’s screaming beak pokes through the netting—screaming at you. You drag Ploodle off the chicken’s bony little head, and toss the dog by his scruffy scruff onto the back porch. The chicken lives—and escapes.

With renewed determination, you jump back into the chicken-chasing fray. Noticing that there are now, two chickens running wild in the yard. They’ve escaped from the dog crate you keep them in during the day, because you pulled the plastic poop tray out so that the chickens could peck at the ground and learn to be real chickens, before you move them from the office shower where they are now living, at night, to the chicken coop you finished roofing last summer.

These are special chickens you remember because they came in the mail, in a box that cheeped, which you found charming, so you dodge left with your butterfly net while the chickens dart right. In the end, you catch both pure bred, special mail order chickens from Minnesota and return them to the dog crate with their eight crate mates.

Ploodle, who believes with all his heart that all chickens are evil and are plotting to invade your home, take your women, and steal your precious metals, has not stopped barking throughout the entire butterfly net, chicken chasing scene. You pray that he will not be called to testify at the mental competency hearing.

These are the moments in a person’s life that I like to call the flaming cascade of unintended consequences: if I hadn’t ordered chickens, I would never have had to chase them around with a butterfly net, which sent Ploodle into a chicken killing frenzy, that made me crazy enough to yell strange things to chickens, which might have been overheard by a psychiatrist who might have been strolling by the backyard of our “farm,” where there’s a chicken coop, built by Jack or somebody.

Just think, once upon a time, I would have been one of those kids that you left under a bush for the hyenas and then I would have never ordered those idiot chickens.

Linda (Chicken Chaser) Zern