Here’s some disappointing news if you’re a fan of poultry. People with chickens for pets have been abandoning them during the pandemic. Admittedly, I’ve never been a fan of chickens ever since my days on grandpa’s farm. He had chickens for food and eggs. They weren’t pets. I may get criticized for dumping on chickens but, very frankly, I think they have a very lackluster personality. If you compare a chicken to a dog, a dog wins paws down.

If a dog is happy, he actually looks like he has smile on his face. His tail will wag; he may whine with glee, jump up and down and bark with joy.

What’s a chicken do if it’s happy? First of all, I don’t think they are ever happy and besides that how can you tell? Try to discern a smile on a chicken’s face. I defy you to find one. That beak is pretty much a beak without bending into a smile and for good reason. They are not happy because they are a bird with a lot of feathers and they can’t fly worth a darn. They have to be embarrassed by other birds who soar above them calling down. “Ooh this so much fun being up here in the clouds rather than all cropped in a smelly ole house pushing out eggs all day long just for a few kernels of corn.” No wonder chickens aren’t happy.

When I was assigned by grandpa to gather the eggs from the chicken coop, I was not prepared to meet a bunch of happy smiling birds.

A chicken coop was a creepy place; usually hot and full of straw, chicken droppings along with evil looking birds just waiting to pluck your eye out and do a victory dance on it. And people like these creatures for pets? Come on, man.

In another even weirder animal story, a professor from Vanderbilt University has a recommendation for all of humanity to save our planet. Our planet needs saving? Yup, it sure does. Back in January of 2019 Congresswoman Amanda Ocasio Cortez declared that we only have about 12 more years before the world was going to end. So for three years now, you probably haven’t done a darn thing about it have you? Here we are now with only nine more years left and you’re more concerned about the welfare of abandoned chickens than our planet sneezing and coughing it’s way into pneumonia and the solar system ICU.

Well, Vandy Professor Amanda Little hasn’t forgotten. She says it time to cut down on modern day meat farming and start using insects and bugs for food. That’s right, insects are rich in protein and they don’t emit flatulence like cows which is rich in carbon dioxide that is destroying the earth.

Prof. Little suggest we start consuming a variety of eatables like crickets, grasshoppers, maggots, and worms. This would’ve been no problem for my mother because Italian mothers never threw out food when pasta sauce was available to camouflage the entree of mystery.

I remember one day when Mom was in the basement cooking a brew like it was a scene from MacBeth, “double, double, toil and trouble.” In the pot she had it filled with chicken FEET. Add the sauce and there was dinner. YIKES!

So. if you think maggots would stop my mother Lucy, you’re wrong. I might have been a bit squeamish over meatballs that were squirming beneath my dinner fork but that would lead Mom to suggest, “so eat your black fly larva first.”

Nin Privitera, former Fredonia resident, now resides in Franklin, Tenn. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com