The Chicken Gave It To Me

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Book: The Chicken Gave It To Me Read Free
Author: Anne Fine
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    You couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. There they sat, squashed in so tight they couldn’t stand. They couldn’t stretch. They couldn’t turn around. Their pale faces pressed up against the cage bars.

    â€˜What’s going to happen to us?’
    â€˜Let me out!’
    â€˜Oooooh!’
    â€˜Help us,
please
!’
    Oh, it was pitiful. But they were one up on us poor chickens. They could at least argue with their jailors.
    â€˜Why are you keeping us in here? Are you planning to
eat
us?’
    â€˜â€™Fraid so.’
    â€˜But that’s
outrageous
.’
    The little green man busy filling their water troughs was clearly a bit put out to hear this.
    â€˜What’s so outrageous about it? You taste
good
.’
    â€˜You can’t just eat us because we taste good!’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Because we’re
people
, that’s why.’
    The little green man shrugged.
    â€˜Pigs. Chickens. People. What’s the difference?’
    â€˜Pigs and chickens are only animals.’
    â€˜So? You’re only people.’
    â€˜But we’re
superior
.’
    â€˜Not to me, Buster,’ said the little green man. And scowling horribly, he left the shed. When he came back, he brought a mate with him, to give him a hand with the water troughs.
    â€˜These people here,’ he said, pointing to the inmates of the cages. ‘They say they’re superior.’
    â€˜Not to me, they’re not,’ his friend scoffed.
    â€˜That’s what I told ’em!’ laughed the first little green man.
    The people were rattling their cage bars in a fury.
    â€˜We are! We are!’
    â€˜Superior? Come off it!’ The little green man lifted his hand and ticked his points off, one by one, on some of his willowy green fingers.
    â€˜Horses are stronger. Swans are more loyal. Chimps live more peaceably. Seahorses have more babies. Dogs follow a scent better. Giraffes are taller. Squids have better eyesight. Camels go longer without water. Jaguars run faster. And little green men know more languages.’
    He had plenty of fingers left, but he’d got bored.
    â€˜I could go on and on,’ he said, picking up the last bucket and tipping the water smoothly into the last trough. ‘In fact, I could be quite rude, and say that the only thing you lot really had going for you was that you ran the whole planet.’
    Just before he slammed the shed door behind him, he added as an afterthought:
    â€˜Oh, yes! And you taste better than chicken!’

7
‘Not today, thank you.’
    â€˜I won’t have the chicken, thank you,’ Gemma said to the dinner lady. ‘Not today. Can I have what Vinit is having?’

    The dinner lady made her usual joke.
    â€˜If Vinit doesn’t eat up his meat, he won’t grow.’
    Vinit gave his usual polite chuckle. He was the tallest boy in the class, and had never eaten meat in his whole life. Today, Gemma and Andrew sat down on either side of him. Gemma seemed to havechicken on her mind, even if she had none on her plate.
    â€˜You’ve never eaten it
ever
?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜What about lamb?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Pork?’
    â€˜No. We don’t eat meat at all. No one in my family does. We never have.’
    He watched as Gemma peeled open her sandwich hopefully, to see if the peanut butter was any thicker in the middle.
    Across the table, Leila finished her mouthful and spoke up.
    â€˜My mum says that if we didn’t eat animals, there would soon be hardly any of them about.’
    Simon looked round in surprise when he heard this.
    â€˜My dad says if we didn’t eat them, they’d overrun us in no time.’
    â€˜They can’t both be right.’
    â€˜Maybe they’re both wrong.’
    The whole table fell quiet, thinking about people and animals. Whales. Dolphins. Elephants. Gorillas. Hard to believe that any animal in the world

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