How Chicken Little Made His Fortune

Chapter One

When chicken little ran around yelling that the sky was falling, the other animals were alarmed, especially the sheep. The sky, said Chicken Little, had released a video threatening the farm with its imminent collapse. The video was grainy, and some animals, especially the turkeys (Doubting Tom among them) were skeptical, and asked Chicken Little that if the tape had really, as he claimed, fallen from the sky onto the roof of his coop, why the tape was not damaged, and why the coop did not seem to be dented at all. At first some of the sheep seemed concerned when Chicken Little changed his story (the tape had actually landed on a haystack and bounced onto the roof of the coop) but by a freak coincidence the turkeys were all eaten by a wolf shortly thereafter.

Chicken Little insisted that those doubting the tape's authenticity had surely been in league with the sky, and that the wolf had done the farm a favor--the wolf in fact had been the victim of a vicious smear campaign and should not be feared he claimed.

The sheep agreed that Chicken Little seemed to have a point--especially when they were reminded that during the last hailstorm NONE of the large hailstones had landed in the turkey pen, a clear sign of their alliance with the sky. Not many of them remembered the bump on Tom's head that had appeared the night of the hailstorm, and those who did were reluctant to bring it up, lest they disappear next time Chicken Little invited the wolf to the farm for the new weekly "reconciliation" meeting.

The fear that gripped the farm was very real, and Chicken Little did everything he could to keep the animals alert to the danger presented by the sky. Seminars were organized to explain to the animals why the sky hated them, and every now and then Chicken Little would play the animals a new tape that had fallen onto his chicken coop.

As the sky threatened worse and worse attacks on the farm, the animals were persuaded to hire the wolf at a princely wage to keep an eye on the sky, which he did admirably while lying on his back. A few weeks into the wolf's tenure as chief of farmland security, Chicken Little had made some expensive looking modifications to his coop--including a reinforced roof to better absorb the impact of the threats he seemed to be receiving more and more often from the sky.

With the population of the farm decreasing steadily (though no one could remember who, if anyone, had decided to move out,) it was less of a burden on the wolf to do his sentry work, as was evidenced by his growing midsection, which he attributed to the lack of lupine exercise inherent in his supine position. As Chicken Little was quick to point out, the wolf's impressive vocabulary and rhyming abilities were clear indications of his honesty and intelligence.