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Health & Fitness

My Father and the Earthquake

What happened during an earthquake on our small family farm

Unbelievably, it was dancing! Swaying and rocking like an old arthritic woman unable to bend her knees. The coop was situated atop a little knoll, and occasionally in the middle of its wild gyrations it would eject a squawking chicken as if the chicken had been thrown out of the coop. Meanwhile, the coop, built years ago on top of 5 foot long 4x4s, was bending, dipping and swaying in an awkwardly graceful manner such that, terrified as we were of the earthquake causing the coop's dance, we could not take our eyes from the sight.

As we were huddled watching this, an apparition appeared from the coop, running on two legs, trailing chicken feathers and gobs of chicken goo and began to run down the short twisted trail to reach us. The apparition was struggling with the trail as the trail was no longer twisted – past tense - but was twisting - present tense - and the apparition kept losing the trail and running off into the bushes on the sides of the trail where it would stumble, regain momentum and continue doggedly attempting to run until the trail would again jump out from under the specter.

At last the earthquake stopped and the ghost finally managed to reach us and we realized it was Dad! Disheveled, wild looking, hair sticking out in clumps – unless it was not already plastered to his head with chicken goo, he was covered with chicken goo and feathers all over him! Mom took one look and burst out in laughter. Of course Dad was a bit resentful he was being laughed at hysterically by Mom, but as we all were ok and the house was still standing, all was well. Mom got the hose and watered off Dad, making him cold and angry, then he went into the house and cleaned up. A hot shower and a bourbon and seven helped things out a bit for him. Afterwards we compared notes.

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I had been reading in the living room, I don't know what my brother was doing, Mom was sewing, Dad was outside somewhere on our small farm when the quake hit. Mom screamed at us to get outside, the three of us ran out, and as we were standing on the angry roaring shaking rumbling ground, Mom began looking around and asking where was Dad? Which brings us back to the aforementioned chicken coop and the apparition. And then we got Dad's story. As usual when something went haywire for Dad it did so in spectacular fashion. Things very seldom went wrong for him but this one was a doozy!

He was in the chicken coop, bent over in a large barrel of scratch, reaching way down inside it to get the last little bits of scratch, feet barely touching the floor when the quake hit. Immediately Dad was flooded with dust from the scratch barrel, which dust is particularly noxious - for those reading this who are fortunate enough to have never had to bend into a barrel of scratch – it causes your nose and eyes to run and you begin sneezing with enthusiasm, snot flying all over, while at the same time you cannot breathe properly due to the dust and begin coughing and choking. So now you are sneezing madly, coughing and choking and generally having a lot of “fun.” This was the first thing that happened to Dad. The next moment his feet left the floor as the barrel began rocking around and he had to fight to keep from being dumped unceremoniously into the scratch barrel – as if the barrel was trying to eat him! He still had not figured out what was happening as it all was occurring so rapidly – he was suddenly fighting to breathe – and the barrel was trying to engulf him! Plus outside the barrel was a “cackleophony” of chickens as the coop was doing it's dance. He finally got out of the barrel where, standing on the slippery floor ( slippery from chicken poop ) he was hit by an agitated squawking flying chicken, his feet went out from under him and he landed on hands and knees on the stinking floor! Standing up proved difficult as the coop was now in full dance mode and was bowing and dipping while inside, chickens, Dad and scratch barrels were rolling around in the muck, and every time Dad would get partly up another flurry of terrified chickens would ricochet into him or a scratch barrel would bear down with murderous intent and down he'd go again, swearing, hacking, coughing, sneezing, meanwhile inhaling the vilest tasting pieces of straw and dust imaginable from the floor of the coop.

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Finally he gained the door and made it outside where he now had to contend with the trail which was behaving like a large python wriggling around in luxurious abandonment. After all that he was laughed at! No wonder he was upset at Mom. In a few hours we finally were able to settle back down and laugh about it all, we had only a few small items broken, the house, water lines etc. were ok, and all was back to normal.

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