The Great Chicken Wars (Part I)

I carefully walk around the credenza toward my desk, eyes darting to and fro, ever-vigilant of possible booby traps. I scour the surface of my desk, searching for spiders, cockroaches, or any other creature that may be lurking under papers, poised to attack. I cautiously peer under my chair, praying I don’t find a snake coiled, ready to sink its fangs into me. My eyes furtively flick up to the ceiling because you never can tell from which direction an ambush will occur. I feel like Indiana Jones, in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, primed to evade poison darts, a mammoth boulder, and any other perils designed to exterminate me.

What has made me so full of paranoia, you ask? I’ll tell you. It was a video of a rubber chicken squawking out (ironically) the Indiana Jones theme song.

So my coworker, Phoebe (names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty. The very, very guilty) is sitting at her desk watching this video, and gasping for air because she’s laughing so hard. She brings her phone over to me, shows me the video, which honestly, is completely and absurdly inane. However, I laugh my head off, not-so-much at the video, but mainly because she’s still laughing so hard I’m afraid she may stop breathing.

She then shows the video (that still has her in stitches) to the deans in the office. Rachel looks at the video, then totally straight-faced, looks at me and Phoebe and says, “I can’t with you two. I just can’t.” This throws us both into more fits of laughter. Tears are running down Phoebe’s face in little rivulets, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to pee my pants if I don’t stop laughing immediately. The dean clearly thinks we’re unbalanced, and honestly, she may be right.

The other dean, Dan shakes his head and starts to walk away.

“You don’t think it’s funny?” calls Phoebe to his back as he retreats to his sanctity of his office.

“Nope,” he said in his best no-nonsense, I’m an important professional voice. (But don’t let that voice fool you. It isn’t true.)

The next day, I return to my desk after lunch duty. Monitoring a bunch of sixth graders at lunch is well, hmm,  how to describe it . . . Think Chris Pratt and the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Anyway, I get back up to the office after lunch duty and this is what I see.

I burst out snort-laughing. Because it’s so unexpected (or well, once upon a time, back in those innocent days of September, it was unexpected) to see a random rubber chicken just staring at you, doofy expression on its face, from your computer keyboard.

This incident, of course, did not have me tip-toeing around my desk, scared that something was going to attack me. Oh no, this was just the beginning. This was the start of the Great Chicken Wars. Tune in tomorrow for the next installment.