THE CHICKEN AND THE AUTOMATED DOOR by George Weller June 20, 2021
There once was a young, you might say adolescent, chicken who was purchased by a kindly man who thought it would be nice to have his own eggs from his own chickens. He would build a nice house and fence in a yard and have all the best things for a chicken who would lay nice eggs for him and his “blond”, that’s the kindly man’s female partner.
To make it really special and a bit more automatic, and to not have to open a door for the chickens in the morning and close it at night, he found and purchased an automatic door for his custom made chicken coop which he designed and made all by himself with the best of materials.
This automatic door was expensive, but very sophisticated with the latest technology. It had a light sensor to know when the sun came up so it could open the door to let the chickens out to play in the grass and find bugs to eat and do other things that chickens do. When the sun started to go down and the light got dimmer, it would close the door.
So as not to hurt a chicken who was part way through the door when the door was shutting, the door had another sensor ( a pressure transducer) to detect if the door hit an obstacle , and if so would not continue closing and cut the chicken in half, but would make it stop and make the door open again.
The time eventually came when this adolescent and curious chicken laid her first egg. She was now a happy full female chicken ready to do just what she wanted to do. She loved her wonderful hand made, custom designed chicken coop with its automatic door, but she loved the outdoors too, especially on cool refreshing evenings when the stars were about to shine.
It just so happened that one evening when she was just a teeny bit late walking up the ramp to the door of her automatic chicken home, the door closed on her a bit as she was going through. It didn’t hurt and it happened again another evening as she was not quite so far through the doorway. It again stopped closing and opened up and she walked on into her custom designed and hand made chicken home for the night, safe away from predators like coyotes, etc. But she did not know anything about them like the kindly man did.
And so it happened that as the sun was going down she went up the ramp to her night time home and through her automatic doorway, she stopped to sit right in the doorway and admire the evening. The last chicken sensing the time was coming when the door would close and if she didn’t go up the ramp and into her custom designed chicken coop with its automatic door, she would be left out. It had happened once before. She was not paying attention, chasing bugs and doing things chickens do, and when she was starting up the ramp, the door closed. She was stuck outside while her two adolescent girl chicken friends were inside She was afraid to be separated from her friends and ran around wondering what would become of her. Luckily the kindly man saw that she was stuck outside and caused the door to open especially for her.
So on this night as the sun was going down, she ran up the ramp only to find her now fully female friend who had laid an egg that morning, sitting in the doorway. What to do? She knew the door would close shortly and if so she would be stuck outside. She had to go inside, so she just walked over her newly mature friend who had just laid an egg that morning and was enjoying the evening sitting in the doorway.
The technological and miraculous door obeyed its sophisticated programming and began to close for the night. When it hit the sitting chicken, gently, it stopped as it was programmed to do. It was not designed to cut a poor defenceless chicken in half, and so it opened up again. It then began to close again as it was programmed to do, and once again hit the newly mature fully female chicken who was sitting enjoying the evening air in the doorway.
This chicken noticed that it had been hit by this automatic and expensive door before and not been hurt and so decided to just sit in the doorway and enjoy the evening. The door started to close and reopened several times, and then stopped and never started to open again.
And that is how the newly mature chicken who didn’t go to school or get a graduate degree outwitted the latest human designed door technology. The end.