By Tim Sanders

I had considered writing about the deep historical significance of Valentine’s Day this week, but I’ve done that before, and cannot remember the particulars of the lies I’ve told, so I decided against it. I wouldn’t want to contradict myself. The notion of a column about whether that Danish cartoonist simply darkened Yosemite Sam’s beard to come up with his image of Muhammad appealed to me, but I am a coward, and wouldn’t want to rile the local Sunnis. It’s tough enough when you get your Baptist and Methodist friends stirred up. So I was left with a couple of innocuous little articles I ran across which are not the least bit offensive, and should not incite anyone to shove an explosive device up my turban.

Chicken gets CPR, rises from the dead

ARKADELPHIA, Ark., Feb. 8 (UPI) – An Arkansas chicken was saved when its owner’s relative gave it mouth-to-mouth after being found face down in a deep puddle.

Jackie Calhoun came home for lunch Jan. 31 to find Boo Boo the chicken floating in in the backyard of their Arkadelphia home.

He and his wife Becky tried to save the bird, with no luck.

Jackie’s sister, Marian Morris, happened to stop by just then. The retired nurse attempted mouth-to-mouth and Boo Boo’s eyes popped open.

After 15 minutes of CPR it started to liven up.

The Arkadelphia Siftings Herald News reports that Boo Boo spent the night in a cardboard box with food, water and a heater to keep it warm.

The next day it started making noise and was returned to the chicken yard.

Now, I believe that your initial reaction to that little article will tell you a lot about yourself. Which reaction most closely resembles yours?

1. That’s so wonderful, and I find it inspirational and sweet to think of blessed little Boo Boo clucking around in the barnyard again.

2. Thank God for the medical profession and dedicated nurses.

3. There are no accidents. Divine providence dispatched that man’s sister to save the life of that dear little chicken.

4. Why didn’t they just wring Boo Boo out and dress her for dinner?

5. When you are dressing a chicken for dinner, would you recommend formal or casual wear?

6. The part about the chicken’s eyes popping open reminds me of the joke about the farmer, the vet with the rubber hose, and the cross-eyed bull.

7. I read that first sentence several times, and could not for the life of me figure out why that man’s sister was "found face down in a deep puddle."

WHAT YOUR ANSWERS MEAN (analysis compiled by a team of local high school teachers, mental health professionals, and poultry experts):

1–You are a warm, sensitive, caring individual to whom we’d like to sell term life insurance and some old eight-track tapes.

2–You are a warm, sensitive caring individual with a close relative who is a nurse.

3–You appear to be devoted to both Boo Boo Hen and Benny Hinn. This can be cured, but only with shock therapy.

4–Local PETA members would be horrified. We love you.

5–We are not fashion experts, so we cannot analyze this answer.

6–This is a serious humor column. We don’t do tasteless sophomoric jokes here, only tasteless sophomoric anecdotes.

7–You are obviously an English major, and there is no hope for you.

This next blurb was borrowed from the February 5, 2006 edition of Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird. Chuck apparently stole it from a 12-5-05 edition of the Courier Mail, Brisbaine, who purloined it from a 10-24-05 edition of BBC News.

In October, Tony Price, managing director of the British firm WStore UK, reportedly threatened to give each of his 80 employees first a DNA test, and then when reaction to that went poorly, a lie detector test, after he accidentally got someone’s discarded chewing gum on his trousers.

Again, your reaction to this little article will reveal a great deal about your personality. Choose a response which most closely mirrors your own:

1. I don’t believe that people should be allowed to chew in the workplace.

2. At least his employees didn’t smoke. What if he’d sat on a smoldering butt? Other than his own, I mean.

3. I took a DNA test two years ago, and didn’t get a D or an A. I flunked.

4. I got out of my car in the Home Depot parking lot and stepped on a fresh glob of chewing gum. I believe it was Wrigley’s spearmint. That was a week ago, and my left shoe is still there. I think that people who discard gum in public should have their lips permanently clamped shut with a pneumatic stapler.

5. I gave a stick of gum to a chicken, once, but it stuck her beak together and she got dizzy, fell into a puddle and drowned. Momma said we could of ate her, if the cat hadn’t of got to her first. Not Momma. The chicken.

WHAT YOUR ANSWERS MEAN:

Answers 1 and 2 indicate a person with severe diverticulitis, answer 3 indicates an individual with acid reflux, 4 points to irritable bowel syndrome, and 5 is a sign of tapeworms. (Actually, I’ve lost the original results. These are from a little questionnaire on digestive disorders I found in my wife’s Better Homes and Gardens magazine, but they’re probably as applicable as anything I could come up with.)

Next week we shall quote Pamela Anderson, the late Colonel Harlan Sanders and a bevy of henhouse beauties on the burning questions of a) whether breast size really matters, and b) how the poultry industry feels about chicken-flavored chewing gum.