Column: Chicken Bowling!

I got the strangest e-mail from my husband last week.

“George has challenged us to chicken bowling,” he wrote. “We’ll need to freeze 20 water bottles. George has the chickens.”

I’d never heard of such a thing. But I had a feeling this event was a long time coming. George, our neighbor, had been watching our latest backyard project with interest — and probably more than a little bemusement — for some time.

Back in November, we (and by “we,” I mean “my husband”) built a two-foot-tall 36’-by-36’ frame in our backyard. We (again, my husband) lined it with a massive white tarp. And then we (yes, we) filled it with water. Gallons and gallons and gallons of water that were supposed to freeze into the perfect backyard ice rink.

Instead, we had a wading pool for the next two months. (Damn global warming.)

But thanks to the recent burst of winter weather, our wading pool is now a bonafide ice rink.

And George, our neighbor, had a novel idea for how we could christen it: chicken bowling.

So there we were last Sunday night — chilling a six-pack of Curveball beer in the snow and arranging ten water-bottle pins on either end of the rink as George crossed his yard with the chickens.

Only, these weren’t just any chickens. No, these were free-range organic chickens — frozen and enveloped in plastic grocery bags, handles tied for gripping power. Clearly, this would be a serious game.

Jay led off (home rink advantage, you know), his first chicken sliding with impressive speed before crashing and spinning six of the 10 pins to the ground. His second chicken nabbed two more. The game was on.

Though George and Jay were the ones facing off, chicken bowling fast became a family affair. Seven-year-old Christian stood rinkside, keeping score on his brother’s dry-erase easel. Four-year-old Bergen served as interference — periodically slicing his hockey puck through the line of fire.

As chickens slid back and forth across the rink, George and Jay said things like, “I think a little more speed makes straighter chickens,” and “This might actually work better with live chickens.” (Don’t go writing me letters, now — I’m fairly sure they were joking.)

The contest was neck and neck throughout — even though the occasional gutter chicken was thrown.

When George threw his final chicken at the end of frame 10, there was a moment of silence as I tallied the scores. It was a tie:
70 to 70.

The game could only end with a sudden death chicken-off.

We held our breaths as Jay rolled his final chicken — knocking all but one of the water-bottle pins to the ground. Mustering his concentration, George approached his lane — and rolled his chicken with such gusto that it spun right out of its bag.

The excitement was almost too much to bear. George’s second, “re-bowl” chicken slid toward the pins as if in slow motion… and sent them flying in ten different directions. A strike.

The crowd went wild. And by crowd I mean Christian and I. Bergen had been sent to the house by this time for high sticking (at his brother’s head).

It was a game that’ll live in infamy. A game, Jay said during the fateful chicken-off, that “could tear the neighborhood apart.”

But most of all it was a reminder to embrace the strange and unexpected. Because those adventures are always the most fun.