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Week 2 - The Chicken Gave It To Me Extract With Questions

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162 views2 pages

Week 2 - The Chicken Gave It To Me Extract With Questions

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Bobbi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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“The Chicken Gave It to me” by Anne Fine

We chickens saw nothing, of course. How could we? There were no windows in the chicken
shed. If we had windows, our lives could not be ruled so well by the electric light that
decides when we wake and when we sleep and when we lay our eggs. After – oh, yes, of
course, after – some of the hens in the cages by the door said that they’d heard the soft hum
of the engines over the howling wind. But the rest of us think they were boasting.

1. How does the reader know what the weather was like that evening?
2. What do you think is going to happen next?

On that black night, the spaceship landed without a sound. And it was not until the shed
door flew open, flooding us with an eerie green light, that most of us chickens woke with a
flutter and a squawk.

Little green men.

And they spoke perfect Chicken. (Later we found out they spoke Pig and Cow and Crow and
pretty well everything. It’s one of the ways in which they are, as they put it, ‘superior’. They
can speak any language they happen to meet. But on that first night we were amazed that
they spoke perfect chicken.)

Not that they were polite with it.

“Chickens!” said the spindliest and greenest, and it was almost like a groan.

1. Why do you think the aliens are there?


2. What type of life do you think the chickens have had?

“Travel a frillion miles, and what do you find when you arrive? A chicken!”

The others flicked the catches of our cage doors with their willowy green fingers.

“Out, out!” they called. “Wakey, wakey! Make room! Out you get! Clear off! Go and make
your own nests! The party’s over!”

The party’s over? We chickens couldn’t believe our luck. We’d been locked in those cages
almost since we were born. Nothing to do. You can’t even stretch your wings. You just stand
there on a wire rack (ruining your feet) for your whole life. And the one thing they want you
to do – laying your egg – you’d far rather do in private.

The party’s over! I can’t describe to you the din as we all fluttered clumsily down, and
scrambled unsteadily for the door.

1. What else does the reader know about the conditions the chickens lived in?

1
2. Why did the chickens move “clumsily” and “unsteadily”?

The little green men were even ruder now.

“Call themselves chickens? I’ve seen finer specimens on other planets begging to be put
down!”

“Look at them! Twisted feet. Bare patches all over. And look at their beaks!”

“Disgusting!”

“Leave the door open as you go, please. This shed needs some fresh air.”

Fresh air! And we were out in it for the first time in our lives. We weren’t going to hand
around shutting the shed door. No fear. We were away. The last I heard as I went hobbling
off on my poor feet into the night was one of the little green men scolding the stragglers.

“Hurry up. Out of those cages, please! We need them for others.”

1. What does the author mean by the phrase, “scolding the stragglers.”
2. Who do the aliens want the cages for?
3. What issue is the author trying to make the reader aware of?

From “The Chicken Gave It To me” by Anne Fine

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