The Chicken War

This is a little story, which is actually tied in in part with a few other very short stories that I wrote when I was in school. I will post it in two parts.

Part 1 of 2

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There was a time, which was quite a long time ago, that the elders called “the wonderful times.”  In those days, their world was at complete peace and there was, as far as they remembered, prosperity for all that lived in the world.  

Some of the oldest hens found it hard to remember the great and terrifying conflicts that took place in their younger days. Even Scratch the Elder could scarcely remember a quarrel or slight disagreement in their world. 

Despite the current peaceful days, the elders would say that it still could not compare to their time.

The chicks liked to listen about those peaceful times; they liked to listen to the stories told by their elders. 

But those days were long gone.  

These days, Barley Farm was a good place to live, and that included the sparse forest across the road, and quite assuredly, any of the other feeding grounds in their known world. 

Beside the occasional alarm from chicken hawks and foxes, it was their world, and life was very good. 

It was said that Barley Farm boasted of having the fattest and more robust chickens in the world, and they were just that.  

The farm up the road, called Henson Farm, claimed to have the best roosters, and as a result, one could say that together they produced the best chicks that money could buy.  

But despite all of that, it seems that peaceful times aren’t always long lasting, as far as the inhabitants enjoying them are concerned.

Which is where our story begins.

There once was an old wolf. He wasn’t a really bad wolf as wolves go, although if you would ask his childhood friends that question, they might say otherwise.

As a youth, he was given the name: Bad.

Now, that name must have contributed to his reputation, that and certain events that took place, certain life altering events for his brothers, and  the group of his youth.

One day, Bad, the old wolf, who was quite the hunter by trade, was walking along the old dirt road that runs along Pallor, which was what that area was called by humans, as such had heard it called by a human once.  

He happened to come by the neighborhood, and remembering that neighborhood from his youth, he took a left at the fork that lies at the base of the hills on the right, and the prairie farms on the left. Although things had changed, he still reminisced.

Old Bad walked along, led by his memories, when he noticed and remembered Old Barley’s Farm in the distance.  

“When I was younger,” he thought to himself, “I remember eating the best tasting chickens from that behind that fence.  Oh, how it would be so nice to eat one again.”  

Old Bad snuck into the small forest across the way, and for a time, spied on Barley Farm from between the trees, which lay just before the old hill overlooking it.  

Soon enough, he noticed chickens moving around behind the fence, and smacked his lips at the thought of a good chicken dinner for himself.  

“Maybe I’ll take a couple of white ones, and a brown and spotted one for today.  They were always so nice and fat and plump and so easy to catch, and no enemies around.”  

As the day waned, the long shadows began to stretch across the farm, as they always did.  

Old Bad snuck his way down out of the sparse forest, which was just across the old dirt road, and hid amongst the long grass, next to the farm, making quite sure that old man Barley wasn’t in sight. 

He looked around, to his right, glancing through the trees, and then behind himself, back up the old dirt road, where he had come from earlier that day.

He looked to his left, trying to catch a glimpse of any enemies that night be about, with the same idea as his.

Red was a small fox, and was as crafty as any fox can get, and he was famous amongst his people for it.  


He thought of himself as the best chicken catcher of the old times. In those long-ago days, Red, along with the others of his group, made the small forest their home and had the best pickings from the surrounding farms.  

Plucking hens in the middle of the night and sneaking them back into the forest amongst the scrub and the fir trees was just a bit of heaven to him.  

Eventually, the farmers discovered him and his kind as they always did, and sent the hounds into the forest to drive him and his people away.  

“Those old hounds are long gone.  No doubt having found finer lands elsewhere.”  He thought to himself as he lay in the cool darkness of tall grass far behind Barley Farm.  

Red crept across a field of scrub and straight into Barley’s corn field, as he made his way towards the farm, and the chicken coop.

The chickens had all of the corn that they could eat and comfortable houses to sleep in.  

Lime liked corn very much, and more so than Scratch, the old rooster.  

He would often be the first at the grassy place where Mr. Barley’s daughter would spread the corn and seeds for them.  Being a very youthful chick, Lime would often beat the others to the corn and seeds, and as a result, would usually get the best kernels for himself.  

Because of this, he wasn’t very popular with the other chicks, who were slower than he was. 

But now, it was late in the day, and time to sleep.  That day was just like any other day, and Lime settled down with the others in the house.  

In his days, Bad was a famous wolf.  In his youth, his old friends enjoyed his company because they know that if he was around, chicken dinners were in their immediate futures.  

He was very popular with the pack, and as a result, Bad was often showered with gifts from his grateful pack-mates; a piece of bone, part of a catch, fish from the stream or roots during the bleak times.  

He thought back at the trouble that they would get into not only at Barley’s but also at Henson Farm and all over the neighborhood (which consisted of the land that the humans called Pallor, the woods and parts of the old hills to the West.  

But those days were long gone and so was the pack.  

Bad quietly made his way into the farm, sneaking under a worn fence,  creeping past a water bucket, across the front of the human house and towards the chicken coop.

Old man Barley was a great wolf catcher in his youth.  

He could bull’s-eye a wolf or something as small and fleeting as a fox with his shiny carbine fifty feet away in the dark and with his eyes closed.  

These days, old man Barley was content with leaving that sort of thing to his daughter, who, as a fact, had inherited his skills in that department although she couldn’t care for it.  

Caroline was afraid of wolves and foxes as a child.  

She would often see them sleazing around the chicken coops late at night looking for something good to eat.  It wasn’t until years later after she had returned from school that her father had bought home a set of hounds.  

It wasn’t long before they grew and made short work of the wolves and foxes and even brought down a bear that had wandered down from the mountains in those days.

Red snuck under the fence and across the grounds.  He reached the shadows of Barley’s house and smiled to himself, having had been chased there long ago by Mrs. Barley and her broom.