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The Barnyard Dialogues: Part I, Two Chickens Take on the Problem of Evil

 

 

The scene: Two chickens (hens) in a barnyard, early one morning, happily pecking away at grain and grasshoppers.

Clare: (pausing from pecking) Marsha,?

Marsha: -Peck, peck- Yes, Clare? What is it?

Clare: I’ve been doing some figuring, and…

Marsha: (Interrupting) Do you count with you back toes too?

Clare: What?

Marsha: When doin your figures…do you count on your back toes or just the front three?

Clare: No. No. Not that kind of figuring. I mean, I’ve been thinking about something.

Marsha: Well -Peck- do you? Use your back toe, I mean.

Clare: Well…I, only when the numbers are greater than six. But that’s not what I was talking about. I was thinking about our eggs.

Marsha: What about them?

Clare: They were gone again last night, when we went back into the barn.

Marsha: Well, so -peck, peck- what? They’re gone every night.

Clare: Yes, that’s just it. We spend all night laying eggs and sitting on them and the next night they are gone again!

Marsha: Clare Honey, you have a brain smaller than a shelled pecan. Leave the thinking to the goats, and use your back toes when doin your figures.

Clare: No. Don’t you see what I’m getting at?

Marsha: I see what you’re not getting at. Grasshoppers, that’s what.

Clare: The farmer. I’m getting at the farmer!

Marsha: Where is the farmer any way? -peck-

Clare: Oh, I think he’s in the barn, cleaning out our nesting boxes. But, what I was saying was… The farmer is good right?

Marsha: There’s one!

Clare: (turning quickly) -Peck- mmmm… thanks, Marsha. -Gulp-… So the farmer is good, right? I mean he gives us cracked corn, he cleans out our nesting boxes, he keeps the fox away…

Marsha: Yeah?

Clare: And, he is powerful. No one else can drive the tractor, or get cracked corn.

Marsha: -Peck- Or -peck- kill snakes.

Clare: The dog killed a snake, last April.

Marsha: That’s true.

Clare: But, the dog works for the farmer, so that still counts.

Marsha: Good, I thought so.

Clare: So the farmer is good and he can do all these things. Why doesn’t he save our eggs!

Marsha: What!?

Clare: He is good, so he wants to save our eggs.

Marsha: Well, yeah.

Clare: And, he should be able to. After all, if he can drive a tractor and kill snakes then surely he can save our eggs!

Marsha: So what exactly are you getting at?

Clare: Well what I was thinkin was that maybe, the farmer doesn’t exist at all.

Marsha: Oh, Clare! shhh. Sit down. You are giving me the heebie-jeebies! Of course the farmer exists, he is in the barn right now! I told you to leave the thinking to the goats.

Clare: Maybe we just think he exists. Maybe our primitive ancestors made up the farmer to explain where the cracked corn comes from. All this time we have been deceiving ourselves into thinking we see the farmer when in reality he does not exist at all!

Marsha: Oh, oh, I just don’t know what to think of all this! You’ve made me goose-pimply all over and made my feathers stand on end!

Clare: You said it yourself, we have brains the size of a shelled pecan. We have been deceived all this time!

Marsha: I said you had a brain smaller than a shelled pecan, and I’m sure of it now!

Clare: (gazing up) I feel as if I have broken through a glass ceiling and a new age has begun! -peck-

Author: J. W. Kraft

 

The Barnyard Dialogues: Part II, Two Chickens Take another Swipe at the Problem of Evil

 

 

 

The Scene: Two Chickens in nesting boxes at night.

Clare: You still awake, Marsha?

Marsha:

Clare: Marsha!

Marsha: Hu! What?

Clare: I’ve been doing some figuring again

Marsha: The kind you do with your toes, or the kind you do with your brain?

Clare: The brain kind.

Marsha: Clare, the last time you did brain figures, you set my rheumatoids off into a scuttle and I laid pear shaped eggs for three weeks! Besides, I talked to Herman the Goat, and he told me all about the eggs.

Clare: You spoke with Herman the Goat? What did he say?

Marsha: He said that you’re just an afarmerist and he’s seen your kind before. And he told me what really happens to our eggs.

Clare: Well out with it! What did he say?

Marsha: Well, you’re not going to believe this but… I didn’t believe it either when Herman the Goat first told me but…

Clare: Marsha!

Marsha: OK. Herman the Goat said that what really happens to the eggs is that… that the farmer takes em!

Clare: What?! What would the farmer want with our eggs?

Marsha: He takes them in the house so that his wife can sit on them. Herman the Goat says that she can’t lay eggs. It has something to do with the blue jean overalls getting the way, but he reckons that a woman of her girth could sit on at least three dozen at a time!

Clare: Well I’ll be! If I had teeth, I’d whistle through em! How did Herman the Goat get to be so smart?

Marsha: The beard and the trash.

Clare: What?

Marsha:Its the beard and the trash. That’s what makes him so smart. Just think about it for a second. The beard is what Herman the Goat has that no other animal has.

Clare: Hmmm. Makes sense, but what about the trash?

Marsha: Well, important documents and manuscripts and such get put in the trash. Herman the Goat, he eats the trash, see? Well when he finds an important manuscript, he doesn’t eat it straight away.

Clare: He doesn’t?

Marsha: Nope, he reads it first. Then he eats it.

Clare: He never ceases to amaze.

Marsha: And you know the farmer’s wife tells him important stuff too. Just the other day, she had to tell him something so important that she yelled it out the kitchen window instead of walking outside to tell him.

Clare: What was it?

Marsha: “Herman, zen tha turn up patcha gin!” And do you know what he did?

Clare: What?

Marsha: He kicked up his hoofs and ran off as fast as he could to take care of whatever emergency it was that she told him about!

Clare: What a trooper!

Marsha: So, the point is that, the farmer takes the eggs so that his wife can sit on them. That is not evil and, that should be the end of your nonsense about the farmer not existing.

Clare: Oh, but that is what I was going to tell you.

Marsha: What?

Clare: I have another theory about the farmer. This one has nothing to do with eggs.

Marsha: What is it this time?

Clare: Its Old Stella.

Marsha: What about her?

Clare: Well, didn’t you hear?

Marsha: No? I don’t think so?

Clare: She finally kicked the bucket!

Marsha: No! You don’t say!

Clare: Yep, she just up and keeled over, by the windmill yesterday mornin’.

Marsha: Was it the droppsies?

Clare: I heard it was cold feet, but of course I can’t be sure.

Marsha: Well that’s a shame. She was a good hen.

Clare: That’s my point.

Marsha: What’s your point?

Clare: That she was a good hen. She was a prize layer. The farmer paid sixteen dollars for her at the fair.

Marsha: Sixteen!

Clare: Yes, sixteen. Least-ways, that’s what Thelma told me. So, my theory about the farmer and the eggs didn’t work…

Marsha: No, it sure didn’t. The farmer exists and he is the one taking the eggs, so its not an evil after all.

Clare: Well I’m still not convinced.

Marsha: Oh Clare! Give it a rest!

Clare: Just hear me out.

Marsha: Remember my rheumatoids.

Clare: The farmer needs chickens, right? Its part of being a farmer, right?

Marsha: Makes sense.

Clare: So, Old Stella, being what she is…

Marsha: MmmmHmmm.

Clare: Well that’s an evil that even the farmer would see. He’s out sixteen dollars! He’s got to replace Stella!

Marsha: Clare, I’m starting to get goose-pimply again.

Clare: How could the farmer allow such a thing to happen?

Marsha: Clare.

Clare: The farmer cannot exist!

Marsha: Clare!

Clare: At la