Quick setup: We have 3 chickens for egg production. They have names because it was a requirement set by the kids. I named mine Nyx after the Greek goddess of the night. I was going to name her after a Lovecraft elder god, with the suffix "Destroyer of Worlds" at the end, but the kids had trouble with pronunciation.

So anyway...

I just witnessed the stuff of nightmares.

After finishing watering the greenhouse, I stepped outside and noticed my chicken (Nyx) messing with something and showing great enthusiasm. I walked over and found her battling a 7ish inch centipede.

Now, I'm not typically creeped out by bugs, but centipedes just happen to be the closest thing to a manifestation from the abyss that we have in the high desert. I watched in morbid fasination for a moment before I considered recording the battle with my phone, which I left in the greenhouse.

I ran inside to get it, but unfortunately arrived back to the field just in time to see the chicken swallow the still writing centipede whole like a goddamn spaghetti noodle.

At first I was thinking, "Oh, shit. Is my chicken about to die a painful death from internally delivered centipede venom?" After a few moments, and no apparent ill effects, I determined that this was not the case.

Then my mind started to wonder...Dear GOD. I need to start being extra nice to this chicken or it will break down my door and murder me in my sleep.

Is my chicken part Chuck Norris?

What if, by some bizarre fuck-you from nature, I go to crack a nice, fresh egg into my skillet for breakfast, and a centipede falls out? Unlikely, I realized, but the mind goes to odd places when traumatized.

I knew I should have gotten the kids a cat.

:: shudders ::

Our chickens eat the wasp nests out of the coop if they can reach them. Tough animals… Immune to capsaicin by the way.

Like like grasshoppers too. Good thing...we've got a billion of them this year.

The cat would kill centipedes, too. And bring a host of other presents to you. Love the chicken’s name, btw.

Well, she's descended from velocorapters and such...

Clever girl.

quote:

Originally posted by irreverent:
Love the chicken’s name, btw.

More than Cyäegha, The Destroying Eye, The Waiting Dark?? What about Gurathnaka, Shadow of the Night, Eater of Dreams??

I honestly still go back and forth at times.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
More than Cyäegha, The Destroying Eye, The Waiting Dark?? What about Gurathnaka, Shadow of the Night, Eater of Dreams??

"Gallīna Nyx, Devourer of the Many-Legged" sounds kinda like an eldritch deity.

I came to understand when a hen named Hannah swallowed McDonalds french fries whole. They've no teeth. Even stranger was Hannah eating a chicken nugget under a picnic table.

My grandfather had a small farm across the road from our house when I was a little boy. He had a rooster that terrorised me. That bird was vicious.

My grandfather kept chickens and ducks. I learned quickly that they can be mean little bastards. Chickens will chase you. Ducks will bite you. I stayed out of the coop.

quote:

Originally posted by SIGnified:
Immune to capsaicin by the way.

I believe that’s most birds, if I remember right. It’s one of the primary modes of chili plant propagation: birds eat the chilis and distribute the seeds far and wide. Pretty cool.

The Chickensaurus will be fine...

You say centipede and all I think of is the only ones I have ever seen, the giant desert centipede. So nasty and disgusting.
If your chicken ate that, it’s the Chuck Norris of chickens. Eat the eggs, don’t ever plan of making fried chicken out of her.

^^^ That was it. The one in question was only a hair smaller.

Oh hell no. That chicken is a badass. She will kill you if you bring up fried chicken in her presence.

Don’t worry about the centipede in the egg. Worry that the egg was in the chicken’s ass. Literally.

When you find the carcass of your chicken with its chest burst open, that’s when you get scared.

Don't let Nyx near a radiation source.
It would be bad.

Perhaps the most underappreciated creature on land...the chicken.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
Don’t worry about the centipede in the egg. Worry that the egg was in the chicken’s ass. Literally.

I wash them before consumption, though it was eye opening to see them being laid for the first time.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
When you find the carcass of your chicken with its chest burst open, that’s when you get scared.

LMAO

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
I wash them before consumption, though it was eye opening to see them being laid for the first time.

They won't stay fresh as long if you wash them. Not sure if you knew that.

Yeah, it's kind of gross if you think about it. I just don't think about it. I'll leave mine out unrefrigerated for week and think nothing of it.