I met a chicken on the pavement outside of Starbucks last week. I don't know whether he was coming or going, but the fact that he even knew what coffee was disturbed me more than a little.

We chatted for a while about the usual things, like the weather, and the price of eggs in China. It was only when he started crying that I realised what a poor choice of conversational topic this was. I tried to comfort him, but soon he was blubbering somethiing about how all his children had been sold into slavery on the Indian subcontinent. Realising immediately the error he was making, I slapped him, and told him that first of all, India was a very different place to China; and second of all, his children were more likely to be eaten, than used as slaves. I don't know whether this cheered him up, or if it was merely the fact that my slap had caused irrepairable damage to his tear glands, but whichever it was, he stopped crying in short order.

Pleasantries thus dispensed with, we exchanged names, but I didn't like the name Horatio, so we swapped back. I asked him what he did with his spare time. He said: 'Be a chicken.' I, of course, was flabbergasted, having assumed that this was his major occupation, and not merely a sideline hobby. He assured me that he was, in point of fact, a racecar driver. Inquiring as to his successes, I was informed that he had been racing for twelve years, and was yet to qualify for a single race, as his feet didn't reach the pedals. Somehow the conversation got onto politics, and he started a diatribe about the subtle differences between Marxism and Communism. I decided that he was trying to show me up, and asked: 'So. Flying, hey? How's that working out for you?' This was met with stony silence. Score one to me.

We told stories of our childhood, and as it turns out, he was hatched in a corrugated cardboard box, with eleven other chickens, who wouldn't even come out of their shells, let alone speak to him. I asked where he went to school. Apparently, he had applied to Harvard, but due to the poultrist attitudes of the day, was refused admission. Score two to me. The conversation turned to music, and he said that despite the criticism they invoked, he thought that N-Sync actually had some musical talent. That afternoon spent talking to a chicken on the pavement in front of Starbucks taught me one thing.

Chickens are crazy.