Chickens

When I was at school in Birmingham a few years ago and the snow was real snow then that was the time for an ice slide to be created across the playground. My mates would line up and hurl themselves along said slide. I didn’t. One of those mates called me a chicken. I thought of it as a perfectly reasonable position to take.

I can think of many other situations since then where I have decided it would be barking mad to put myself in a position of some danger. That cliff path near Whitby, a scree slope on Cader Idris, walking the pavement across the Clifton Suspension Bridge etc.

Which brought to mind the daft things done to avoid being chickens. Kids all round the world do some mind bogglingly stupid things, running in front of trains, lying down in the middle of busy roads, dangling from cliffs.

running in front of trains

Grown-ups (I use the word reluctantly) are just as daft. For instance, one game of chicken is any contest with two players where neither one wants to back down or let the other win, even though not backing down can be very dangerous. The classic game of chicken takes place when two people drive cars at very high speeds directly towards each other. Obviously, if neither one turns away, there will be a big crash and both will be harmed. The person that turns first is the chicken. In mathematical game theory....

Mathematical game theory? I came across this term all the time when looking for chickens and it was unexpected to say the least.

A formal version of the game of Chicken has been the subject of serious research in game theory. 

Chicken game

Two versions of the payoff matrix for this game are presented here (Figures 1 and 2). In Figure 1, the outcomes are represented in words, where each player would prefer to win over tying, prefer to tie over losing, and prefer to lose over crashing. Figure 2 presents arbitrarily set numerical payoffs which theoretically conform to this situation. Here, the benefit of winning is 1, the cost of losing is -1, and the cost of crashing is -1000.

fig 1: a pay-off matrix of Chicken

fig. 2: Chicken with numerical pay-offs

I have no idea what the above means so I’ll finish off by choosing a few of the 22 amazing facts about chickens that my friend T sent to me:

1 They can distinguish between 100 different faces.

2 They see more colours than humans.

3 They will make friends and grieve.

4 They have dreams when asleep.

5 They can run at 9 miles an hour.

running at 9 miles an hour

Here is a poem I found relating to chickens and I rather like it.

Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty

What struck me first was their panic.
Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars—
and could not get them in again.
Some hung there like that—dead—
their own feathers blowing, clotting
in their faces. Then
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.
She had pushed her head through the space
between bars—to get a better view.
She had the look of a dog in the back
of a pickup, that eager look of a dog
who knows she's being taken along.
She craned her neck.
She looked around, watched me, then
strained to see over the car—strained
to see what happened beyond.
That is the chicken I want to be.

                                                       Jane Mead

from the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, 2015

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.