THREE LEGGED CHICKENS
Safely returned from South Vietnam, I had decided to take a driving vacation, to visit some places I wanted to see in this great Nation and to see some places that just happened to be there. I was on the return leg of my journey, had the top down on my Triumph TR4A, and was driving through Arkansas, admiring some beautiful Fall countryside. As I cruised along, I passed a chicken ranch. It was lush and green. There were hundreds and hundreds of chickens, chickens of all colors. They all looked quite serene, unconcerned, just milling about as chickens do; BUT, the closer I looked, I could see that all the chickens - every single one - had three legs....three legs! When I saw the gate, I could not resist. I turned and drove up to the farmhouse. A middle aged man, his wife and a young man who appeared to be their son were sitting on the front porch. As I got out of the car, their dog came wagging and the man asked, “Can we do somethin’ for you?” I responded with a smile, "I was admiring your chicken ranch as I was driving by, when I noticed that all your chickens have three legs."
The man nodded and said, "Yeah, there's a little story there. Me and Ma and the boy here dearly love fried chicken. Mama's chicken is known as the best around. What we love most is drumsticks. So, every time Mama would fry one chicken, three of us would fight like hell over 2 drumsticks. But, if she fried 2 chickens, we'd fight like hell over the extra one. Caused to many problems in my household; so I inbred, outbred, overbred chickens 'til I came up with three legged chickens." I was rightly impressed and said, "That's amazing. If I hadn't seen it, I don’t think I would have believed it." Hoping for an invite to try some of Mama's fried chicken, I asked, "How do they taste?" The farmer responded with certain frustration in his voice, "We got no idea. We can't catch one."
This experience taught me a valuable lesson:
Always question the ends as well, not just the means.
This was product improvement gone awry.
Comments