Did you ever wonder why all the best stories are about chickens? Well, it's been that way for a long, long time. It started before humans ran the world, in an age when all the animals lived together in an optimal community, with each species doing what it was best at and enjoyed doing most. Gophers and moles and other rodents were farmers, birds were scouts and messengers, grasshoppers and locusts were musicians, cats were painters, and whales and fishes were philosophers. Occasionally an alligator would eat an opossum or a lion would chase down a gnu, but for the most part, everyone stuck to a diet of soy, bread, beans, and grass. It was as peaceful and wonderful as the world has ever been.

In this bygone age, chickens were storytellers. With their natural penchant for clucking and chattering, they could deliver stories with consummate emotion, drama, and panache. Yet their little brains were unable to retain more than half a dozen stories at a time. So it fell upon the ostriches, who were meticulous and patient, to memorize the stories as they were told and teach them to the next generation of chickens.

Now, of all the chickens who ever told a riveting tale, one was known unquestionably as the greatest. Her name has been lost to history, but, among chickens at least, her legend perseveres. It is said that when she related a story, one felt as if one were living it. Every word seemed to imbue the landscape with color and infuse the breeze with fragrance. Her stories so moved her audiences that more than once an animal wondered why it should bother living life and accruing actual experience when her tales imparted emotions and memories equally real. And so well was she loved and respected that not once in her life was she interrupted while speaking, even by a leaf falling onto the ground.

The ostrich chosen to memorize the tales of this peerless raconteur was a young, quixotic male named Botard. His prior assignment had been to an elderly rooster whose stories were remarkably incisive and detailed, but terribly, terribly boring. So when Botard was given the opportunity to memorize for the greatest storyteller of them all, he was overcome with excitement and enthusiasm. He threw himself into his new project heart and soul, spending every waking moment at the chicken's side, determined not to miss a single word. And, being of a categorically romantic bent, he promptly fell in love with her.

In this near-utopia of yesteryear, there was but a single source of real unhappiness. The animals' religions and traditions absolutely forbid one of one species to be in love with one of another. The idea was not simply frowned upon; it was abhorred. There was no qualification, no mitigation, not the slightest bit of sympathy or understanding. Many a beast had been driven to lead a life of secret misery by this moral rigidity, but so it was, and there was no hope for change.

In light of this rigorous and unyielding taboo, Botard was forced to dissemble his feelings, which grew stronger and more irresistible with silence and time. His days he spent gazing at the chicken he loved, listening to her incredible voice, admiring her, and longing to enfold her in his feathers. At night he lay awake and cried, bemoaning the cruelty of fate.

Botard's private misery continued for years and might have forever but for the fact that ostriches' life spans are longer than chickens' by a factor of ten. While Botard was still young, in the prime of his life, his adored chicken grew old and died. This finalization of his lifelong longing and sorrow was more than Borard's heart could withstand. He lost his head in his grief and wailed and blatantly and unabashedly proclaimed his love and bereavement for the world to hear.

When, after five full days of weeping, Botard finally depleted his tears, he looked up and saw all the animals staring at him in disbelief and hatred. In their eyes was no hint of pity or commiseration. Although he had behaved well and not acted upon his feelings, Botard had broken a fundamental rule of decency. Now he was loathed and unforgivable. He was a pariah. The animals drove him away into the mountains with shouts and threats and warned him never to return.

Even having seen justice served, the other ostriches were unbearably mortified and ashamed. Their fellow had disgraced their species and sullied their profession. Perhaps if it had been a lizard or a lemming that Botard had fallen in love with, they could have stomached the indignity. But a chicken! And his charge, no less! It was unthinkable. As one, the ostriches buried their heads in the sand and vowed not to remove them for seven years.

Albeit understandable, the rashness of the ostriches' act turned society upside down. Seven years is a lifetime for a chicken. While the ostriches' heads were in the sand, the current generation of chickens passed on and the next generation came into its own. But there were no ostriches to teach them stories. The young chickens knew not one to tell.

Doing their best to live up to their responsibility, the new chickens composed stories of their own. If you have ever read a story written by a chicken, you will know that this was no solution. The stories were terrible: plotless, pointless, humorless, senseless, most often without a beginning or end. The animals could not stand to listen to them and soon stopped paying attention. But without the distraction of storytelling, the animals became bored and began to grow restless and misbehave. Here a rabbit was found dead and half-eaten in a field. There a lone titmouse tail feather was discovered on a rock. The carnivores were reverting to the vicious ways which they had renounced so long ago. Fear and apprehension reigned. Something had to be done.

A council of animals was called. The most prominent member of each species met on the prairie to discuss the situation. After much arguing and emotional outpouring, it was agreed that there was only one viable solution, repellent though it seemed. Botard would have to be found and persuaded to return, for only ostriches knew stories to teach to the chickens and none of the other ostriches' heads could be coaxed from the sand.

Thousands of birds took to the skies and scoured the land in search of the exiled ostrich. For days they flew without success. They began to fear that he had met his end in the wilderness and society was doomed. Finally, though, a sparrow spotted Botard sitting on a mountainside in the shade of a boulder. The sparrow alit on his back and told him what had happened and humbly asked him to return. At first, Botard thought, "It serves them right. Why should I help them after they ruined my life?" Still, hurt as he was, he longed to be able to live again in society. His life was miserably lonely. Besides, he was too kind to let the animals suffer. So he swallowed his indignation and the remainder of his pride and prepared himself to do what needed to be done.

When Botard was seen running towards them from the horizon, the animals, especially the smaller ones more susceptible to predation, shouted with joy. He was feted with delicacies and fresh spring water while his shameful past was discreetly not mentioned. But Botard did not let the celebration divert him. When the festivities ended, he got straight to work.

Botard called all of the chicks and young chickens around him and prepared to recite the stories he knew, but as he opened his beak to begin, he found that the words would not come. During the years of his exile, Botard had spent countless hours in reverie, fondly remembering the chicken he loved. Over time, thoughts of her had displaced all the stories he had once known. Now he was unable to recall a single one.

What was Botard to do? He couldn't let all of the animals down. He couldn't face disgrace again.

So Botard told the little chickens about his lost love, how she looked, what she did, what she said. He told a thousand stories, sometimes embellishing the memories with ideas of his own. And in each tale, he gave the protagonist a different name, so it would not be evident of whom he was speaking.

The stories he told were born of the great emotional extremes his existence had known. Love and sorrow, reverence and alienation saturated their language and commanded their plots. And, though he could not explicitly bring them to mind, the greatest moments in the stories he had memorized long ago sometimes seeped from his unconscious to inform these new tales.

The young chickens listened with rapture as Botard spoke, occasionally wondering why they and not he were chosen as storytellers. And when, at last, he had given them all of the stories he could, they went out into the world and began to retell them.

Over time, those tales, the oldest we have, have been polished and improved, modernized and varied, and made more and more grand. Now chickens and ostriches and lions and minks all live separate lives. Their peaceful coexistence has long disappeared. Yet in each of their disparate and sundry societies, similar stories are told. And in each, as in ours, the best tales are ones about chickens, evolved from those Botard told long ago.