When I was in my teens, my best girlfriends lived on a chicken farm. This inspired us to have the Poultry Olympics.

The first event was the �hen toss�. We would take an unsuspecting chicken and pick her up, and then throw her to a partner. You had to be sure that you threw the chicken butt-end first, or it would be able to see where it was going and flap around too much. That makes them difficult to catch.

The second event was called �Dizzy Chicken�. My friend would pick up a chicken by its legs, then swing it in concentric circles around her head for a few minutes. The woozy bird would then be placed on the ground, and allowed to escape� that is, if it could walk. Usually it would stagger a few steps and fall over. I used to laugh when she did this, but it was one of those �oh-my-God-that�s-so-horrible-I-can�t-believe-you-did-that-I-shouldn�t-laugh� laughs.

Next event- �CONTACT!� To play �CONTACT!�, you would go into the chicken barn at dusk, when the chickens were just starting to fall asleep. The chickens roosted on the rungs of a ladder fixed across the room horizontally. We�d stand at equidistant points at the ladder, making comments like �pilot to co-pilot, are we cleared for takeoff?� �Roger�. Then, when enough witty pilot banter had passed between us, the chosen �pilot� would should �3, 2, 1... CONTACT!� and we�d each grab a handful of a chicken�s tail feathers in each hand and pull, causing them to flap their wings crazily. Oddly enough, none of them ever pulled hard enough to get away at the expense of their butt plumage.

The fourth, and final event� was the �Rat Bucket Relay Race�. This was the best part.

See, every chicken barn in the world has rats. You can�t stop it, it�s a fact of life. The best you can do is keep the rat population to a reasonable limit. You can�t use poison, either. Chickens will eat anything. I mean anything.

We discovered by accident one day that a bucket filled halfway with water and left in the barn would attract rats, who would fall in and drown. If we simply left a bucket there, by the end of the week we could have several deceased rats floating in it.

On Saturday mornings, we would go to the chicken barn, and if we had any goodies in the bucket, we would bring it outside to the yard. The chickens would all follow in a great flock, hoping something good would happen. Once we had a good spot with plenty of room, we�d dump the water out, and the sodden, bloated rats with it.

That�s when the fun would start.

The chickens would converge upon the spot and begin to battle over the rat remains. Some of the rats could have been there for over a week and were usually pretty juicy. One chicken would grab a rat leg, and another chicken would grab a rat tail, and the whole rat would just split down the middle like a wet fruit roll-up. Then another chicken would dash in, to grab the juicy intestines as they spilled out of the middle. This would continue until there was nothing left of the rat- not even bones.

This is what happens to children in rural communities with no cable.