Noughts and Crosses

Yesterday I popped off about teaching my chicken to beat me at tic tac toe. Maybe you didn’t pay attention to that comment or maybe you snickered or maybe you thought I was making stuff up.

When J-Dub mentioned playing tic tac toe against a chicken one time at a fair, I figured he was full of bologna.  Which is standard fighting in our household. 

Most of our wedded arguments are dumb factual duels in which he’s claiming truth to something like tic tac toe playing chickens, while I’m shaking my head at him, my mouth pursed in a determined grimace,  my eyebrows creased, until he shouts “GOOGLE IT”!   In which, afterwards, I must feign an apology and proclaim him the know it all of the universe, and then rub his feet.

Tic tac toe playing chickens do exist. Not only do they play tic tac toe, they win. 

Currently, there are chickens playing Noughts and Crosses, as it used to be called,  in casinos across the country. For 25 to 50 cents you can get beat by a chicken and leave with your ego bruised.   These chickens are in a box like contraption, pushing buttons with lights next to them.  Evidently they are trained with positive reinforcement.  Give them a little chicken feed when they push the right button and they’ll play for hours.  And win lots of quarters.

Having a trained chicken intrigues me.  Not to make money of course, just to show off my chicken to friends and family and of course school children. 

 I’m wondering if Freedom has it in her to be an Xs and Os champeen.

What else might she be capable of? 

The options are endless. 

The sky’s the limit.

If only I had an inordinate amount of time. 

And a really smart chicken.