I WAS driving south on Texas Hwy. 30 from College Station last week, after conducting some personal business in that city, when I came upon an unusual sight. In the middle of this 2-lane road near the town of Carlos, a chicken stood silently on the middle stripe. It looked even more bewildered than chickens usually look.

This chicken was just standing there, dazed and confused. Although it was out in the country, there was no sign of a farm nearby, or any other reason a chicken might be crossing the road in mid afternoon.

As I drove toward Roan’s Prairie, I soon noticed an occasional white feather floating in the air immediately in front of my car. The number of feathers whipping through the air increased exponentially, until I could see in the distance a large truck that appeared to be carrying crates. Chicken crates.

I PASSED the truck and gazed momentarily at the chickens, on their way to someone somewhere, surely as food for you and me. These chickens were in transit. They were becoming a meal in the near future.

But one chicken escaped. He made it out of a pen and onto the highway. As I drove on, I wondered what happened to that chicken. Maybe someone picked him up, took him home, and made him a pet. I doubt it, though. Maybe he got run over by another truck within minutes. That wouldn’t be surprising. Maybe someone who is burdened by a poor economy picked him up, and took him home to a family that could use a free meal. That’s my favorite choice. He gave his life for someone to make a meal of him.

There was something about that chicken in the road that prodded me to think about how he got there, how he might end up, and whether his getting out of the pen on the truck really changed his future. I suppose there is the chance he was made a pet for someone who cared for him lovingly ever after, but that seems unlikely. In all probability, he ended up dead sooner than he would have otherwise, and he also ended up eaten.

EVEN IF he was run over by a truck, he ended up eaten by something, just not by humans. Is the purpose of a chicken to be a meal for someone or something? In most cases, yes.

And yet, he did experience freedom outside that cage for some period of time. I’m a meat eater, but I lament the conditions of stock raised for food. Used to be, they lived a decent life, and were killed for food when the time came. I can remember my Granny Moore wringing a chicken’s neck and preparing it for a meal back in the 1950s. Just like the saying, it ran around with its head chopped off, a phenomenon that stills seems fairly unique to chickens.

Perhaps my road chicken gained some short-term freedom but died sooner, perhaps horribly. Was his additional freedom a good trade off for the end he might have seen? I’ll never know, but everywhere I look, I find mysteries of life that make me ponder. When we break free of the world we know, we are never certain of that which awaits us, are we?

© 2009, Pappy Moore, All Rights Reserved.

Pappy Moore is a humorist, a native son of East Texas who still makes the piney woods his home.

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