In a recent column, I pondered how the world would change if dogs were as dumb as chickens. The following day I got an e-mail from my friend Bruce Friedrich, who is Washington spokesman for PETA, the animal rights lobbying group. Like all great social liberators -- Gandhi and Mandela come to mind -- Bruce has suffered for his principles, such as the time he was arrested in front of Buckingham Palace, where he was running naked with a vegan Web address painted above his butt. If you're gonna hang with lobbyists, you can do a lot worse than Bruce.
Anyway, he wrote to inform me that I am an idiot, that chickens are at least as intelligent as dogs, and he offered to prove it. Like all great leaders, though, he didn't offer to prove it himself. He delegated that task to Terry Cummings, who runs Poplar Spring, a rural Maryland sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals. I drove out there.
Terry agrees that birds are vastly smarter than people think they are. She brought me to the poultry area, where we were greeted by Edward, a peacock. Edward was strutting around in full NBC mode, displaying his handsome fantail to Abigail, Pearl and Jeannie. Unfortunately, Abigail, Pearl and Jeannie are guinea hens, not peahens. In terms of the likelihood of productive mating, this would be like a guy in a bar flexing his biceps to impress a cigarette machine.
Terry winced. "Actually," she said, "I have seen Edward displaying to squirrels."
Remember, please, that the dog-bird claim was made not by Terry, but by Bruce. Terry was gamely (ha-ha) trying to help him out.
Many of the chickens at Poplar Spring were refugees of Santeria rituals, discovered in Washington cemeteries, at night, with candles burning nearby. (Most Poplar Springs animals narrowly escaped death in some way. Adam the sheep was found by Washington police in the company of five men with a butcher knife. They claimed they intended him no harm, but also found in their possession was a bottle of barbecue sauce.)
Next, we visited the chickens. I admit chickens look pretty alert; they are constantly whipping their heads around in a startled fashion. Unfortunately, they don't appear to be looking at anything in particular. ("Behold, air! Behold, more air!")
Terry found Emily the hen, whom she has been teaching a trick. Terry hid a bread crumb under one of three plastic eggshell halves, the one marked with an "X." Instantly, Emily pecked one of the others. So Terry showed her where the crumb was, and tried again. Emily pecked the same one as before. We repeated this several times, and Emily pecked the right shell exactly one-third of the time. Math can be cruel.
"She's just learning this," Terry said. "You should come back next week."
Next, we encountered Tyler the rooster and his girlfriend Wendy.
"So chickens are monogamous?" I asked.
Terry looked pained. "Well, Wendy is monogamous. . ."
