Shorty the Chicken Finds Temporary Home in City

Several years ago I was a newspaper reporter covering a county fair in a small town near the city where we live.

I didn't have a sitter for my 4-year-old son, Damon, and took him with me that evening. He rode a few rides and played games while I interviewed people about the fair.

During one interview, we stood near a game where participants tossed toss ping pong balls into dishes floating in a kid-sized pool. The prize for landing a ball in a bowl: a baby chicken or a flop-eared bunny.

My son begged me to play but I said "no." I didn't want to take home a live animal from the fair. We lived in a city and didn't have a place to keep chickens or rabbits.

The man I was interviewing grinned at me and told me I should let my son play. Watch the game, he said. I continued the interview while watching a few players toss the white balls. It was obvious the chances of my son landing a ball in a bowl were slim.

My son pleaded again.

The man grinned again.

I relented.

Damon took the ping pong balls - they were three for $1 - and excitedly tossed them at the floating dishes. As expected, every ball he threw bounced away and landed in the water or on the ground.


As we turned away from the game, the woman operating it called me back so she could give Damon his prize. To my astonishment, she placed a peeping yellow chick in a paper bag and asked me if I wanted to buy feed for it. I forked over another dollar. She handed me a small bag of feed.

Unfortunately, I hadn't watched the game closely enough. Turns out the bunnies were for those who landed a ball in a dish. EVERY player received a chick.

Because my son was so delighted with his prize, I didn't have the heart to tell the woman to keep the animal. The chicken went back to the city with us, peeping all the way home while Damon excitedly jabbered.

"I'm going to name him Shorty because he's so short," Damon said, beaming as he held the small paper bag containing the chick. (I can still hear his little boy voice saying that from the back seat of the car!)

Shorty fared well. Within days the chick began sprouting feathers in place of his yellow fuzz and was outgrowing the 10-gallon aquarium that served as its makeshift home.

Damon soon discovered that feeding and watering a chicken and cleaning up its poo wasn't so fun after all. When I suggested Shorty would be happier living on a farm with other farm animals, Damon agreed.


The next day we found a new home in the country for Shorty where he lived happily ever after.

The moral of this story… you tell me!