I've never seen a turkey wrestle, but I've seen a chicken box

I often reminisce about the time I was a kid visiting a friend's farm up in the country, and met a mad rooster, who was apparently provoked by my wardrobe of cutoff jeans, a striped short and and a beanie with the slogan "Don't Go Away Mad, Just Go Away" on it.

Yes, I was an early member of Mötley Crüe.  And an avid viewer of Tommy Lee Goes To College, for that matter.

I'll be doggoned if that rooster didn't peck me right on the knee! Yow! And I told him as he strutted away that I would take it to the streets, and exact my revenge at every KFC and Popeyes and Wendy's and every other chicken joint in the continental US.

Then I ran to the farmhouse to put some Texas Pete on the abrasion. I was one tough kid, I wanna tell ya.

And I wanna tell you that raising chickens is now a very big deal! We have a wonderful friend who has quite a flock of hens and roosters, and she loves it! Lots of people do, and according to last week's New Yorker, it's the coolest thing out in Silicon Valley to have chickens, although they sort of do things up a lot fancier out there.

These are the people who designed the very screens you are reading this on, and the software to make the pixels spell out these words, and Johan Land is an example of that. He's the lead project manager at Google's Waymo division - that's the self driving car that will be banging up your fender any day now. It would be sooner than that, but Land is wise enough, according to the Washington Post, to work less and enjoy life more.

“It’s a fascinating thing to sit and watch the animals because instead of looking at a screen, you’re looking at the life cycle,” Land told the paper. “It’s very different from the abstract work that I do.”


Yes, because computer screens don't leave manure all over the place! Not literally, anyway.

And Land isn't into this as deeply as some of his techie colleagues, who spend up to $20,000 for a chicken coop and hire personal chefs for old Foghorn Leghorn out there. Land has 13 chickens and three sheep.

So as part of my ongoing effort to share my moneymaking schemes with you, here is today's Big Business Idea: Move to Silicon Valley and sell:

•  live chickens. They shell out (!) $350 for a laying hen that fetches $15 in the real world.
• chicken feed. These people are putting a diet of organic salmon, watermelon and steak out for the chickens, and I bet it's been weeks since I had the salmon/steak/watermelon combo platter.
• veterinary services. You can just imagine if Rhode Island Reds coughs one morning. These people will have you out there looking down his throat in five minutes.
• coops. They are into redwood coops that match their own houses, or chicken "shacks" made of reclaimed materials. They also go for solar panels, automatic doors, electric lights, and video cameras so they can check in on the brood at the office.  Their office, that is. And you can bet those coops have Wi-Fi so the birds can follow their favorite teams...The Eagles, The Cardinals, even the Orioles.

We all do what we can, as we can. If people out there in California have this kind of money to spend to avoid going to KFC, more power to them. And just don't go out there and try to rustle other people's chickens...they don't like a Chicken Pot Pirate.