Chicken Jumparoo

When we visited Gatorland earlier this year the highlight of the trip for the boys was the "Gator Jumparoo" where handlers hold up raw chickens above the water and the crowds watch the gators go airborne to grab the food. So it only seemed logical that given enough free time, we'd end up doing our own jumparoo involving chickens, but in a less morbid capacity.

We had a bit of leftover spaghetti from dinner the other night and having two little boys, the conversation led to how much it resembled worms. The lightbulb went off and the Chicken Jumparoo was born.

This is by far the most entertaining thing I've done in a long time, which is either a sad commentary on my life as a stay-at-home-mom or it's quite amusing, depending on how you look at it. The first time we did a Chicken Jumparoo I called Farmer B at work excitedly explaining the entire hilarious event over the phone and instead of laughing along with me, he paused and told me I need to get some real friends - then he specified that the chickens don't count as real friends.

We've had three Chicken Jumparoo's now and the chickens see the bowl of spaghetti coming and work themselves up into quite a savage frenzy of snapping beaks and karate-kicking chicken legs.

Here is Clementine showing her best moves. She's definitely our smallest chicken, but our highest jumper too. She likes to close her eyes as she goes in for the noodle and does a mean kung fu kick if one of the other girls jumps with her.


Look at those chicken legs, tense chest muscles and closed eyes. She's a chicken on a mission and has more concentration than the other two combined.


Sookie is a much calmer jumper. She's done some mad moves, but overall she just propels herself directly upwards and grabs the noodle in a very calculating manner.


Here's Sookie in mid-air with her beak clamped firmly around a noodle and a deadly side kick whacking out with her left leg.


Maggie prefers to hop up and down without much effort and then steal the noodle from whoever just jumped up and grabbed it. She has discovered it takes much less work to reach over and grab a noodle from the beak of a tired jumping chicken than it takes to actually jump herself. Sure she'll jump if the other two are fighting over a noodle, but she's not as prone to Jackie Chan moves as the other two.


And here's Sookie and Maggie doing a chicken version of the spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp.


So if you have chickens and you have spaghetti, you know what you have to do. I'll film this next time and attempt a video post because it's definitely a site to see.