I have an awesome group of girls that partake in the occasional Girl’s Night Out (GNO). All told, there are seven of us so it can be difficult to find a time in everyone’s schedules for GNO. Let’s just say we are happy to average every other month or so. Well, thankfully, five of the seven of us were able to get together last Friday night. Very last minute. Very spontaneous. We’re crazy like that.
My friend Linda was gracious enough to offer up her house for the gathering. Let me just take a moment to tell you what an amazing hostess Linda is…Linda is an amazing hostess! She is such a sweet and humble person. You just can’t help but enjoy talking to her. Her house is absolutely gorgeous. Every room looks like a page out of House Beautiful, but in a warm an inviting kind of way. Not in a don’t-touch-anything-Aunt-Edna’s-going-to-make-you-sit-on-plastic-slip-covers kind of way. (No offense intended to Aunt Edna, of course.) Linda made the most lovely crab cakes for us. There must have been at least 50 of them. And the salad! Let me just tell you about the salad she made: A bed of mixed greens with crumbled goat cheese, red grapes, and whole pistachios. Simple yet divine.
We were just chatting away, and eating ourselves silly, when Linda’s husband came home with her little cuties. Before I know it, Linda’s daughter brought in a few of their baby chicks from their chicken coop to show us. In fairness to Linda, the chickens are not hers. She was very adamant that we didn’t refer to them as “Linda’s Chickens.” The little chicks are just babies. Sweet, tiny fluff balls. We were “ooing” and “ahhing” appropriately when my BFF Julie says:
Hey! Do you guys know how to hypnotize a chicken?
Wait. What?!
Hypnotize a chicken! I learned how to do it in Haiti!
Oh. Of course you did. Apparently, on Julie’s recent trip to Haiti, a Texan on the trip showed them the fine art of chicken hypnosis. I guess you can hypnotize them before wrapping their bodies in bubble wrap for transport. I’m really not making this up. As this is clearly a life skill that we have all been lacking, Julie then proceeded to show us how to perform hypnosis on the baby chicks. Being that I am all about life long pursuit of knowledge, it’s only natural that I share it here.
- Take a firm, but gentle hold on the chick in the palm of your hand, being sure to keep it’s wings tucked in.
- Then place your finger on the base of the chicks neck, and slowly run your finger up the neck, over the head, and then down the beak.
- At the same time that you are running your finger along the beak, gently tuck it under your finger and hold it. The chicks eyes should be closed and it will stay in this sleep-like state for a minute or two.
Here’s one of the chicks coming out of his little chicken-trance:
When I got home, I Googled “hypnotizing chickens” and it came back with 249,000 hits. Yes, a quarter of a million hits dedicated to chicken hypnosis. Seriously. And not one of the methods was the one that Julie showed us. So if you are interested in expanding your knowledge, the information is out there.
So the next time someone asks you, “Hey! Do you know how to hypnotize a chicken?” You can say, “Why yes. Yes I do!”
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