Marie Taylor, Ink

“Lay more eggs!” said the Farmer. “These eggs are too small!” said the Farmer’s Wife. “Get back on your nest!” crowed the Rooster.

Henritta Hen had spent the whole summer sitting in the chicken coop of a New Jersey farm. She was sick and tired of laying eggs day after day. She craved excitement. She wanted adventure. She was ready to Live Large. So early one morning before Rooster cock-a-doodle-doed, Henrietta flew the coop!

She went straight to the Jersey shore where she jumped on a fishing boat putting out to sea, and until the pirates came, she was having a really swell time munching on fishing worms. Before you could say, “Yo, ho, ho!” those bloodthirsty sea dogs had thrown the captain overboard and were dancing a jig while a peg-legged sailor with one eye played the accordion, which according to some isn’t musical at all.

The unruly rogues trussed up Henrietta and made her walk the plank. She closed her eyes and jumped, swiftly sinking down to Davy Jones’ locker. Luckily, the incredible pecking power Henrietta had developed in the barnyard allowed her to loosen the ropes just in time to grab the flipper of a south-swimming whale.

Before you could say Moby Dick, Henrietta Hen was hitching a ride around Tierra del Fuego and heading for the South Pacific. Just as the sun was setting, the whale blew his spout, spewing our harried hen, along with an old tire and two empty Coke bottles, near the sandy shores of a tropical island.

Enchanting Polynesian melodies perked up our fatigued fowl, and the insistent throbbing of the jungle drums set her Terpsichorean toes to tapping. After a long walk along a dark river, our adventurous avian was suddenly surrounded by a circle of carousing cannibals already in the burping stage of dinner.

After the speeches were made and the votes counted, Henrietta was a shoo-in for the evening’s entertainment. In a trice, which is slower than a flash but faster than a jiffy, our powerless pullet was propelled to the head of a conga line of vivacious villagers prancing up the side of a volcano.

Now Henrietta was nobody’s country bumpkin regardless of what some people have said about New Jersey. It didn’t take her long to realize that this was a one-way trip to a midnight barbecue. Fortuitously, which is being lucky by accident, an updraft from the volcano’s fiery furnace gave Henrietta an unexpected lift, and flinging off years of barnyard brainwashing, she took flight as fast as she could flap.

Before you could say “Holy Smoke!” Henrietta found herself over the China Sea, and if it hadn’t been for a stray firecracker singeing her tail feathers, she would have made it to the Great Wall by moonrise. Instead, Henrietta looked down and saw a solitary caravan wending its way across the Great Gobi Desert. Making a snap decision, which luckily does not require fingers, she lowered her landing gear and lit upon a camel whose compass was set for the Silk Road and points south.

By morning, the caravan had clip-clopped its way deep into the cloud-capped Himalayas and from her lookout atop the hump of the indifferentdromedary, Henrietta saw a snowstorm approaching. The winds howled and the snow flew, and just when she was about to become the world’s first chickensicle, Henrietta was kidnapped by the Abominable Snowman.

This mythical monster of the mountains slung her under his hairy armpit, clumped across Tibet, and slid into his hideaway south of Shangri-La. He carelessly tossed Henrietta into the cooking pot and while waiting for the water to boil, counted and polished the jewels in his secret treasure trove.

Maybe it was the long cold walk, or maybe it was the coziness of the cave, but soon his hairy head began to nod and before you could yawn, the yeti was deep asleep in slumberland. Unwilling to be the evening entrée, Henrietta hopped out of the pot, rolled up a gigantic snowball, jammed in the gems and kickstarted the slippery sphere.

Holding on to the snowball for dear life, she rolled down, then up and then down again,  cresting three mountains before crashing into the front leg of a thirty-foot elephant pondering the most propitious path to Persia at a jungle crossroad. Sparkling jewels spilled across the forest floor when the ponderous pachyderm pounced on Henrietta for interrupting his cogitation which is like thinking only deeper.

 Seemingly out of nowhere, which is very hard to find, a handsome Prince wearing a turban on his head and curly shoes on his feet, suddenly appeared on a flying carpet. Escaping the irascible elephant, Henrietta grabbed the cruising conveyance with one scaly claw, while the other foot rapidly snagged a thirteen-pound pink pearl.

Before you could say “I saw it first,” Henrietta and the Prince were in a life-or-death struggle for possession of the beauteous bauble. Meanwhile, the now driverless rug soared over India, careened around Carpathia and took a right at Turkestan. The hammerlock around Henrietta’s neck finally loosened when the carpet crashed in the loading dock of a Turkish bazaar in Constantinople. 

Quick as a wink which is so fast it is hard to see, Henrietta swallowed the peerless pearl, then filched a fez from an amazed merchant and clipped a curl from a dancing girl to make a moustache. Traveling incognito, which you would be hard pressed to locate on a map, she zigged and zagged through the bazaar while being pursued by the pugnacious Prince, the glowering girl and a now fez-less merchant waving a scimitar which is like a sword only curvier.

Henrietta finally made it to the harbor where she hid in the bowels of a barge bound for Cairo. As the ship sailed over Homer’s wine-dark sea, our bodacious bird coughed up the priceless pearl and tucked it under her wing. Roosting on a rafter, she had sweet dreams of high-stepping roosters who cock-a-doodle-doed just for her.

When the sun slowly rose over the Great Pyramid and cranes called from the Nile, Henrietta’s beady eye lids shot up like window blinds. She quickly clapped her wings over her eyes and stuffed her feet into her mouth, but no matter how hard she tried, tradition triumphed. “Cluck-cluck-cluck!” she called in response to the rising sun and laid a large white egg.

Before you could yell “Stowaway!” our fearless fowl’s cover was blown, and Henrietta was pursued by an Egyptian sailor with a meat cleaver and a nasty grin. If Henrietta hadn’t squawked, she might not have dropped the pearl; and it might not have rolled overboard if the sailor hadn’t tripped over the egg; and if Henrietta hadn’t have jumped in after the pearl, the ship might not have capsized, which is like sinking but upside down.

Henrietta was doing a pretty impressive back stroke when a passing tourist looking for a souvenir spotted the bedraggled bird, plucked her from the water and carried her to a waiting yacht. When the ship finally pulled into New York harbor four days later, Henrietta squeezed through the porthole, scurried down the gangplank and hitchhiked to New Jersey where she sold the pearl to a Mafia kingpin and never laid another egg.