More Adventures in Spatial Relations With Ursula

So we were headed to my signing yesterday, and we passed the place with the giant metal chicken. Their LAST metal chicken.

Oh god! What if I went to the book signing and returned and they were giant chickenless? What if some clever bastard got to the chicken before me?

"Look!" I said. "We’re running early. I NEED THAT CHICKEN."

Kevin looked at the chicken and put his head in his hands. "How do you propose to transport your chicken?" he asked.

"We’ll put the seats down. It’ll fit in the back."

"It’s as tall as I am!"

"We’ll stuff the legs between the seats."

Kevin signed heavily and said "Let’s see if Jacques and Wendy are in…" (Naturally he knows the store owners. Kevin knows pretty much everybody.) 

We went in. I got a discount because Kevin used to be the scout leader for the the offspring of one of the sellers. We tromped out and looked at the chicken.

"IT WILL TOTALLY FIT," I said.

"It’s not gonna fit."

"We could get your convertible…"

"NO. It’ll puncture the leather seats!" (Indeed, the Giant Metal Chicken has Giant Metal Spurs.)

"Then we’ll come back in two hours with bungee cords and tie it to the roof!"

Kevin gazed at the car, then the chicken, and perhaps had the brief mental image of me behind the wheel of the Vibe, laughing maniacally, cruising through town with a Giant Metal Chicken tied to the roof. He looked at his watch, calculated time to signing, calculated time required to talk me down from the heights of metal chickenhood, ran a hand over his face, said "God, I love you," in a conversational manner, and then he and the salesman started manhandling the chicken into the back.

Turns out I was right. It DID fit, as long as you didn’t mind niceties like closing the hatch or legroom in the front seat.

We had to go home again–we couldn’t take the chicken with us to the signing in an open car. Someone might steal it! Giant Metal Chickens are a hot commodity! You hotwire one of those babies…well, anyway. We took it home. Kevin sat with his knees up to his chest, since the chicken’s legs were wedging the seat forward at maximum, and laughed helplessly all the way home.

And when I go to resell the Vibe, if anybody ever asks what the scrape marks are on the plastic interior are from, I have a REALLY good explanation.