I am thinking about a chicken.

Why, you ask? Well, because, at one time when I was a child, we had a yard full of them wandering hither and yon, and we herded them from old coop to new. Yes, herded chickens. (That, and it may be Dana’s fault.) I was a master chicken-herder, back in my day. In particular, I was an expert at chicken hypnosis. Making a flock of them all go one direction, not so much. But I could hypnotize them individually quite well thank you.

There is a trick to hypnotizing a chicken, and I will tell you what it is. You must catch the chicken first. Then, you will want to turn it over on its back. The chicken, on the other hand, will want to flap its wings and flail its claw-tipped legs. I never recommend a wild one-handed grab at an escaping chicken. It is best to wander up to them casually, then pick them up in two hands with their wings firmly pinned.

In turning over the chicken, one does not want to release the wings accidentally. They have a remarkable ability to bruise the hands and forearms, which in extreme cases of chickenish hyperactivity or hypnotist smallness, or any combination thereof, may cause one to drop the chicken. This often ends badly. A dropped chicken is generally not in the least amenable to being stalked and caught again. They become downright flighty — odd, since they have no brains to speak of, but there it is.

When a chicken is on its back, in general it will calm down substantially. It’s somewhere between 90 and 180 degrees of the barrel-roll that things are iffy. As a result, one does not want to halt the chicken-rolling process too soon. When fully turned, the reversed chicken should then be stroked on the breastbone. Its eyelids will begin to flutter, and its head to loll. At this point, the chicken is successfully hypnotized.

This bit of ancient wisdom came down to me from the mists of antiquity through my father. Though I am not certain of the exact role of chicken hypnotism in historic farm life, it does make transporting feathered individuals much simpler. I suspect this lore may have come from my grandmother. Some other gems of sagacity from her included:

1) Do not open an umbrella in the house, or it will cause you bad luck. I once saw her chastise my father severely for even daring an attempt of this. She had even warned him first, and he did it anyway. Sakes.

2) On the first day of the month, if the first thing you say aloud is “white rabbits,” you will have good luck for the rest of the month.

3) Do not let Old Billy in the house, should he come around. He is a strange man who once walked in without knocking. Most alarming.

As it turns out, she was absolutely right about this last, as Old Billy went on to nearly set a former pastor of ours on fire. In later years, he lived in the basement suite beneath the pastor’s family. At approximately 2 in the morning, Old Billy decided to cook something. While it was cooking away on the stovetop, he went out for some fresh air. The whole building nearly went down.

As a result, you may wish to consider the rest of my grandmother’s advice regarding umbrellas, white rabbits and chickens, as one can never judge on face value. I can attest to the chickens and the neighbour. As to the other two, my father often says “white rabbits” still, and he is doing well enough indeed; but I will leave it to you, dear reader, to experiment with the dire umbrellas.