For the Life of the Chicken „ Lee Spurgeon, PLS The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 39, No. 2 8 FOR THE LIFE OF THE CHICKEN For the more dainty readers, I feel an obligation to warn you that this story has a tragic ending, so if you are prone to blanch at horric things in life, perhaps this story isn’t for you. We will wait while you make an exit. Okay, now on with the story, one that is based on true events. By true events, I mean it in the Hollywood sense of the word, that is most everything is completely made up. Our tale of woe begins in a quiet Portland neighborhood where two families, the Mortons and the Pisiczks (not their real names) have lived next to each other for several decades. ey got along well, looked aer each other, remembered each other’s birthdays and generally behaved as well as any neighbor in a 1950’s sitcom might. e neighbors also knew their common boundary line was not where it was supposed to be. e plat map of their subdivision showed that the common line between the two properties was supposed to be at a 90 degree angle to the street, but the occupation line which is based on shrubberies and who mowed what, angled into the Morton’s property from the street. e Mortons were more than happy to be accommodating neighbors for the sake of neighborhood peace and it was never a big issue until Mrs. Morton needed to care for her elderly mother and needed to sell the house and move to Arizona. e Morton’s thought it was important to correct the boundary problem so that they wouldn’t have to pass the problem on to a prospective purchaser. So far, this almost seems too good to be true, but there really are people out there who are decent citizens and who spend more than a little time trying to do the right thing. e Mortons talked to the Pisiczks and they agreed to split the cost of a survey and everyone would abide by the actual survey line. My company was hired and aer getting signed work orders and a down payment on deposit we went out to investigate what exactly was going on with the common boundary line. e eld crews discovered that the actual boundary line was much further into the Morton’s property than anyone had imagined, but a deal is a deal and we set monuments and both parties agreed to the new boundary except for one minor problem. Lying over the new boundary line was a chicken coop that was the residence of a single rooster named Jim. Jim isn’t the real name of the rooster, the real name is actually Cogburn. Jim was an accidental Easter pet that happened to hatch from a fertilized egg that had been lovingly kept warm by one of the Pisiczks children. Old Jim had lived with the Pisiczks for many years and the Pisiczks felt that he would be upset if his longstanding home were simply picked up and moved over. e Mortons agreed that Jim’s feelings should be taken into account so they called me up and asked about way in which the boundary could be established while still taking into consideration the feelings and sensitivities of Jim. For those of you who were raised on a farm, the dispute would have been settled over a chicken dinner. Also, if you have lived on a farm you will know that worrying about the feelings of a chicken is a rather frivolous aair because chickens have no feelings. If one were to program a chicken, this is what the programming ow chart would look like: Hatch Walk Around & Cluck No Find Something? Yes Can I Eat It? Run Away Eat It No Can It Eat Me? Yes Yes No (Note that a rooster has three extra lines of code, but as this is a family friendly magazine, we will just have to move on without mentioning it.) Also, if you would please note that nowhere in the programming of a chicken is there anything that even closely resembles feelings and sensitivities. A chicken doesn’t love you and by virtue
PLSO Issue 2, 2016 March/April
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