The Chicken Gave It To Me Read Free Page B

would be all that much worse off left alone.
    Moodily, Andrew poked at the lump of chicken on his plate. He was hungry, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to eat it. Gemma felt sorry for him. She didn’t feel like swapping plates, but she did try to encourage him.
    â€˜I don’t see why you shouldn’t eat it if you want. That chicken was keen enough to gobble up the grub. And that was still alive.’
    Vinit was staring now.
    â€˜What are you two on about? What chicken? What grub?’
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜Doesn’t matter.’
    Andrew made another stab at eating his lunch. This time the fork got as far as his mouth before he had to put it down again.
    Vinit was still staring at him.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’
    Andrew laid down his fork.
    â€˜I just can’t eat it.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I think it’s because I’m not sure where it comes from. I don’t know how it fetched up on my plate. I don’t know anything at all about it. I don’t even know what sort of life it led.’
    He looked gravely at Gemma.
    â€˜Maybe it even came out of one of those long brown sheds . . .’
    Vinit was grinning now.
    â€˜If you can’t eat it because you didn’t know it personally,’ he said, ‘then you’d better have some of my sandwich.’
    Gratefully, Andrew took what he wasoffered. Silently, Gemma handed him some more. While he was chewing, he eyed the slab of chicken cooling on his plate.
    â€˜I’d eat it,’ he told Gemma and Vinit, ‘I’d eat it with no trouble if I knew for certain that all its life it had been –’
    He broke off. It sounded so silly that he couldn’t say it.
    â€˜Yes?’ Vinit prompted him. ‘You’d eat it if you knew that all its life it had been –?’
    Andrew blushed.
    â€˜Happy as a grub.’
    â€˜A
grub
? You mean, like a
maggot
?’
    Andrew nodded.
    Vinit laid down what was left of his sandwich, and pushed back his chair.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ he said politely, and got up and left.
    Without even thinking, Andrew snatched up the remains of Vinit’s sandwich, and gobbled it.
    â€˜Hungry work, all this reading,’ he explained to Gemma.

8
Chicken no longer!
    I stuck my beady eye to a knothole. Inside the shed, an argument was raging.
    â€˜Listen, you don’t
need
to eat us. You got on perfectly well before you landed here. None of you look starved. None of you even look hungry. Why pick on us?’
    â€˜I
told
you. You
taste
good. After a long, hard day taking over a new planet, there’s absolutely nothing to beat the smell of a nice, roasting –’
    â€˜Shut up! Shut up!’
    All the cage bars were rattled frantically.

    â€˜Stop saying that!’
    â€˜Not in front of the children!’
    The little green mantried to be reasonable.
    â€˜Look,’ he said. ‘I grant you it isn’t the world’s best life, being stuck in a cage till you’re eaten. And maybe we were a bit rough with one or two of you. I’m sorry about that.’ He spread his green hands. ‘There. I’ve said it. I’m sorry. I can’t say fairer than that, can I?’
    He waited for his apology to be accepted as generously and graciously as he had made it.
    There was a stony silence. Then, from the back row of cages came the word:
    â€˜X!*&@/%!’
    Language a chicken wouldn’t dream of repeating.
    The little green man’s mood turned a shade on the ugly side.
    â€˜I’ll tell you what gets me,’ he said. ‘The sheer hypocrisy of it! Who built these sheds without any windows or fresh air? Youlot did! Who put up the cages? You did! And who locked those poor stupid little chickens up in them?’

    (‘Poor stupid little chickens’? I didn’t care much for his attitude. But I kept watching.)
    He was swinging around now, pointing a green finger at cage