Stupid Chickens

Once, back in college, I asked to be in the annual student/alumni art sale. Unfortunately, as the woman in charge told me, all the spots on the street were taken up by people who were responsible enough to apply weeks before, as opposed to an hour before, like me.

Years later I drew a bunch more chickens for a book pitch about stupid chickens (which went nowhere), and years after THAT I got hired to illustrate a book called The History of Underwear With Professor Chicken, which just goes to show how life folds back on itself.

But it was a long-standing tradition that, on the art sale day, one or two students with too many clothes would have an impromptu yard sale on the lawn just across the street, so I got a couple friends to help me carry some milk crates and plywood and set up next to the clothes-piles with a sign saying CHICKENS SOLD HERE. They sold well, and for a while afterwords people I didn’t know called me “The Chicken Guy.”