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Henny Penny and the Egg Crisis

Writer's picture: Celine SparksCeline Sparks

Storm the henhouse! These left-wing chickens are refusing to lay enough eggs to fill the styrofoam carton, and as a result, we’re gonna have to eat deviled marshmallows during the Super Bowl instead of deviled eggs. 


They say it’s because of avian flu. I didn’t know hens got the flu. All this time I thought it was chicken pox. They say egg production is down 4.5 percent as chickens are probably hacking their lungs up while laying on the couch watching General Hospital. Isn’t that what usually happens with the flu? They say they can’t stock the shelves of the grocery store fast enough, but I say something’s rotten in the state of Henmark. 

Henny Penny’s probably running around demanding longer leave when a chick is hatched, better nest conditions, and fluffier feather-dos from the company salon. She’s not laying until it happens. Eggs are tripling in price due to scarcity, and when we ask why, the farmer says, “Uh, Henny Penny didn’t come to work today.  She’s, she’s, uh . . . She’s got the flu.”


She and her friends have been doing this for a hundred years. Don’t you remember the time the acorn fell, and the entire poultry association from Ducky Lucky to Cocky Locky were running around in a complete panic like chickens with their heads cut off – wait! Bad choice of idiom – saying the sky was falling, and marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to tell the king?


Chickens are drama queens. And as a result, we’re gonna have to win the lottery in order to even eat breakfast. I suddenly understand all the hype and ensuing grief over the fall of Humpty Dumpty.  I’m just about ready to call all the king’s horses together to repair an egg that drops to the floor. That was a hefty investment.


You do have to wonder, though, if horses are particularly good with egg reconstruction. I just would have never seen that coming. 


Hire them! Bring ‘em on! When the grocery bagger says, “Do you want your eggs in a separate bag?,” I answer, “I want them in their own cart with pillows underneath and on all four sides. 


I read on a news site that the farmers are asking the feds to fund research to develop an avian flu vaccine.  Oh man, can we not go through that again? I can just see the chickens ranting now. “They couldn’t make me put my beak in a mask, and they sure aren’t going to make me get a vaccine, and what was that? THE SKY IS FALLING!!”


Well, I for one, was glad to learn the reason a dozen eggs are only slightly cheaper than Swift tickets right now is because of bird flu. Flu comes and goes. We’ll get our eggs back, and all will be well again in the neighborhood. The chicken schools won’t be closed anymore due to 20 percent absenteeism. The chickens will stop pulling back layers of straw trying to find the Robitussin. 


We’ll be able to afford eggs again, to put in a pretty plate with 12 egg-shaped compartments, and we’ll stick a lettuce leaf in the middle of the plate for no other reason than we don’t know what else in the world goes there.  We’ll quit complaining about the cost, and complain about the shell that’s coming off in little pieces and should be done by Superbowl 2026.


But don’t get too complacent. I hear there’s a strain of flu headed straight for the Rotel tomatoes.



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