There’s a town called Oviedo not too far from where I live. The strange thing about Oviedo is that there are chickens wandering around for no apparent reason. I’m not sure if they raise them and release them, or if there is just a large feral chicken population.

At any rate, after eating breakfast at a restaurant there, I recently found myself hanging out on a small hill with N, waiting for the rest of the family. Fortunately, we had the bag of dining props (books, small toys, etc) that we always take into restaurants with us.

While we stood there, a rooster walked up over the edge of the hill. I pointed it out to the little guy.

“Look! A chicken! See the chicken?”

As soon as he saw it, he started to walk towards it. I cautioned him, “go ahead, but be careful. He might not want to be petted.”

He stopped and looked at me. “Chicken?”

I motioned encouragingly. If he wanted to go see the chicken, I didn’t really see any harm in it. “Sure, you can go. If you’d rather just say hello from here, that’s fine too.”

He immediately came back and started rummaging through the bag of toys. He straightened up with a plastic toy phone in his hand and pressed the button to make it ring. “Hello? Hello, Chicken! Hello!”

He held the phone out for me to take. “Chicken says hello.”

Ummm.. I took the phone. ”Hello, chicken.”

To my credit, I didn’t look around to see who was watching me talk to the chicken on the toy phone. Okay, maybe I glanced.