Flapping My Left Wing by Hannah Fortune

Awakened by the call of her bladder in the wee hours of early morning, Ms. Little, affectionately known by her pals as, ‘Chick’, padded bleary-eyed to the bathroom and stepped in, almost slipped in,WATER, nearly an inch of it, up to her cute little ankle.
“Awk!”, cried Chick. “What the Devil is going on?” Simultaneously, as she flicked the switch for the hall light, a light came on in Chick’s head. “The ice is melting! The ice is melting! I must tell the King!”, squawked Chick excitedly, and, rushing out the door, still clad in her flannel nightie (the one with the holes in it), she jumped in her SUV, wings akimbo, feathers flying.
“Oh, my!”, she thought suddenly, “I’d better stop at Henny Penny’s and warn her”, and so, making a quick detour, she shortly pulled up smartly in front of her friend’s new condo, laying on the horn in spite of ordinances. But Henny blew her off, saying there was a big sale at the Mall and just call her later.
Perplexed at her friend’s insensitivity and lack of compassion for the fate of the planet, nonetheless our intrepid harbinger of big bad news carried on, remembering with a start that Henny was a Republican. None too soon, she arrived at the White House and asked breathlessly for an audience with King George. (They had issued an Open Door policy since re-writing the Constitution). Tapping her foot for a good three hours, while common folk begged for all manner of frivolity like heating oil and health insurance, which, while important, were simply not an emergency like her’s, Chick thought. Finally, it was Ms. Little’s turn.
She bowed gracefully, under pressure to come across as believable while wearing her nightgown, breath that could bowl you over, and, she realized with chagrin, bedhead. But, undaunted, Chick stepped up to the Golden Throne. “Sir”, she said in her strongest voice, “I have news! The ice is melting! Remember Al Gore? The man that actually won the…..(Chick stopped herself just in time)….. Mr. Gore? He was right! The earth is warming and the ice is melting! I have proof! Chick held up her foot, which was by now bone dry.
“I think maybe I heared this story before somewhere, not precisely positively absolutey”, said the King, with a frown on his face. “But looky here. I’m the Decider and I say the earth will not be warming! Quit pestering me! Be off or I’ll have your head!
With that, Ms. Little took off just as fast as her stubby little legs could carry her. Her head! She knew all too well about heads being chopped off, many of her contemporaries having met that very fate.
“Shit!”, said Chick, in a rare burst of profanity, “No one will listen to me. I’m going to have lunch at McDonald’s, go shopping, buy a flat screen TV and shut up!”.
So, there she was at the Mall, about to bite into her Big Mac, when…..POOF!…..Chick woke up, sweating and twisted all up in her sheets, but safe in her own little bed. “Why! I was having a nightmare!”, exclaimed Chick. George Bush is still the President, but thank goodness he’s not the King. And I wouldn’t be caught dead driving an SUV. And certainly the only reason I’d enter a McDonald’s is to use their facilities.
Chick got up to get a drink of water, and thankfully, found the floor nice and dry. She had seen Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, the minute it came out and had worked tirelessly ever since with other activists promoting solutions to what Chick felt was the biggest crisis the planet and all species has ever faced. Increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress, and the lack of any real change on the part of, well, just about everyone, she had lately realized she was downright burnt out.
What was a chicken to do! “You know”, said Chick out loud, “I will go to the Mall and get myself some new clothes, a nice comfy recliner, and a great big TV”.
And that’s exactly what she did.

Next: Re-Discovering Her Social Conscience