Gleepy the Hen

Once upon a time, there was a hen named Gleepy. Gleepy was not like the other hens, because Gleepy was slightly more intelligent. While other hens never really thought much about what they did or why they did it, Gleepy would sometimes think for a little while about things and then go back to whatever it was that she was doing. This sometimes caused a lot of unrest for Gleepy who always looked sickly. She never slept well at night, and never felt comfortable living with all the other hens in the chicken coop.

Every day, Gleepy seemed to get up off her eggs at the exact moment the farmer came to collect them. She wondered why they disappeared the way they did. At night she would lay an egg or two and the next day when the farmer came by to feed the chickens, she would leave to get food and come back, and would find that her eggs were missing. How sad!

Gleepy tried to develop a means of primitive communication to enable her to communicate with the other hens. She wanted to find out if she was all alone with her problem in this cruel, horrible world. Gleepy thought perhaps that others had had the same problem, and could help her. Gleepy started squawking and jerking about in a most unusual manner, dropping all over herself and the other hens. The other hens had absolutely no idea what she was doing, and only became displeased with Gleepy for dropping all over them the way she did.

Gleepy got discouraged.

Gleepy then tried to make artificial eggs from assorted pieces of grass, roots, and excretions in order to demonstrate to the other hens what had been happening. She spent days working on it until it was perfect --- just like the real thing. She let it dry in the warm morning sun. The farmer came along and mistook it for an egg. It looked so fine and smooth.

"This will sell like a hotcake," said the farmer as he put Gleepy's egg in his basket and brought it to the market.

At the market, a devious young lad bought Gleepy's egg to use for a Halloween prank. On Halloween night, he tossed it at a house that had been rumored to hand out old stale Tootsie Rolls every year. "This'll teach those old coots," the boy said with a grin. He then took a running start and threw Gleepy's egg as hard as he could against the house. Gleepy's egg smashed on the house, fragmenting into a white powder that went into the boy's eyes, blinding him for life.

Gleepy knew nothing about this, and entirely gave up the idea of trying to communicate with other hens. She realized that if she were meant to communicate then she would have been born a whale, or perhaps a chimpanzee. Gleepy lived on in misery; scratching and pecking for food, never knowing where her eggs went, or why she was born a hen.

By Michael T. Mecca