When I was 16 I got a job working at a chicken ranch with a friend of mine. It was what seemed at the time, to be a great low skill level, low effort, after school job.

The lady that owned the ranch was I think somewhere in her 50′s, she had a few gray streaks, wore jeans and a flannel shirt, and could hit a lizard from 10 feet away with her chewing tobacco, (very impressive).

She asked my friend Alan and I if we were trustworthy, hard working, and punctual. We responded in the absolute positive, with just a hint of having a halo over our heads.

I mean what are you supposed to say? “We will rob you blind, never finish the work, like a plumber, and you will be lucky if you see us before you sit down to watch Oprah.”

The lady explained to us that we would be responsible to collect the eggs from all four coops, feed all the chickens, scoop the poop once a week, and tend to the deceased, and for this she would pay us each 40 dollars a day. She did ask if we minded being paid in one dollar bills, (funny she did not look like a stripper to me), we were teenagers, we didn’t care if she paid us in pennies.

We agree, spit and shake hands, and she walks us up to the coops for training and orientation.

NOTE:

I was 16 and at the time I did not know this was cruel treatment for a chicken, after all they lived better then me.

In the first coop we see four double rows of chicken cages, with three chickens in each cage, about 100 cages deep. There is a conveyor type belt that runs the length of the cages and looks to deliver the food, under that is a padded tray where the eggs sit to be collected, below all the cages is…….. well, poop.

Our job is to push a cart with our belly, and grab eggs with both hands, and after time she say’s, “learn to size them by feel.” The idea is to push the cart while looking at the chickens in the cages to see if all are alive, having four stacks of egg flats on top of your cart for, small, medium, large, and extra large, (a flat holds 18 eggs).

The lady said she would give us a few days to get the sizing down, after that, if there were too many mistakes we would have to be let go. I got so good at it I could have gotten a job at Victoria Secrets, (get it?).

You go down one side and up the other collecting from the trays, depositing those chickens that have gone to a better place in the bottom of the cart, at the end of, “up one down the other” you off load your eggs, and those that have given their all, and do the next row ’til all four are done.

After the egg collecting and the biblical, “Bring out your dead,” you move to the front of the coop and turn on the feeder. This is a big silo that has a belt under it and sends food out to all the chickens, one row at a time, the chickens know this sound and go ballistic like Pavlov’s dog’s, or just like I do when the bell goes off on the microwave.

The end of each week, you have to take snow shovels and scoop the poop, collect it in a wheel barrow and pile it outside, where a man in a big truck picks it up and does whatever he does with it. He also by the way picks up the 55 gallon drums with the dead in them, (don’t ask, I didn’t).

The job is the same in all four coops, outside coop number 1 is a hatchery where the cute little yellow chicks are awaiting their fate, had I known then what I do now, I would have let them go.

Once all is said and done at the coops, we were then to load the eggs in the back of a truck and take them to her processing center.

The processing center is where she takes the eggs by hand and places them on a belt that takes the eggs on a trip. First they get a bath, then they go through a type of bright-light x-ray to see if there is an alien life inside, and to look for cracks. After that they are sorted by size, refrigerated, and await buyers, that I found do pay her in one dollar bills, bigger buyers by check.

Things I learned:

****Some eggs do not have a hard shell, and when you grab them by feel……. well you get it.

****When you load the truck with over 10,000 eggs, Do Not take turns too fast.

****The boss will not like to see you having an egg fight in her coop.

****Baby chicks will eat food out of your hand, big chickens will eat your hand.

More to come next time….

Hints, tips, and whatever:

Three women die together in an accident and go to heaven.

When they get there, St. Peter says, ‘We only have one rule here in heaven: Don’t step on the ducks!’

So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one.

Along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw.

St. Peter chains them together and says, ‘Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!’

The next day, the second woman steps accidentally on a duck, and along comes St. Peter, who doesn’t miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as for the first woman.

The third woman has observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very, VERY careful where she steps.

She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks, but one day St. Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on….. very tall, long eyelashes, muscular. St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.

The happy woman says, ‘I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?’

The guy says, ‘I don’t know about you, but I stepped on a duck.’

This one is really worth passing on…

Useless Virgo Facts:

1. Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are almost dead?

2. Why do banks charge a fee on ‘insufficient funds’ when they already know there is not enough money?

3. Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars; but have to check when you say the paint is still wet?

4. Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?

5. Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?

6. Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

7. Whose idea was it to put an ‘S’ in the word ‘lisp’?

8. If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

9. Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?

10. Is there ever a day that mattresses are NOT on sale?

11. Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?

12. Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?

13. Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?

14. How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?

15. Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that’s falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?

16. In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?

17. How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?

18. The statistics on sanity is that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends — if they’re okay, then it’s you.

19. Now send this on to your friends and make them smile too!

20. A day without a smile is a day wasted!