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Speaking of biting off more than you can chew? This is the funny impression you get from meeting a baby Chicken Hawk by the name of Henery hunting a huge, overgrown, what looks to be three hundred pound chicken with a southern accent, by the name of Foghorn Leghorn. It can actually bring tears of laughter to your eyes. I hope you enjoy the story, because we had the privilege of growing up watching it.

Henery is a small, brown chicken hawk with feathers. He is a tough young bird but he still lives at home with his parents. One day Henery wants a chicken for dinner. He declares to his mother, “I am a Chicken Hawk!” His mother refuses to give him chicken, insisting he eat a worm, or he will get no supper. Junior refuses to eat a worm because he is a chicken hawk and chicken Hawks eat chicken. Henery’s mother puts him to bed and tells him to go to sleep. When the parents are asleep, Henery strikes out on his own for the first time, eager to capture and eat a chicken. Because he has lived a sheltered life, Henery does not know what a chicken looks like. The only thing that Henery knows is that, chicken hawks eat chicken and he wants one. Evidently, when you have a taste for chicken, worms won’t do. When Henery meets Foghorn Leghorn, he says, “Did you lose something boy?” Henery says, “I’m a chicken hawk and I’m after my first chicken.” Presuming that this young, naïve troublemaker is no real threat, he tells him, I am a horse when he actually is a chicken. Seeing the potential for annoyance, Foghorn points and manipulates Henery in the direction of Barnyard Dawg. He seeks to convince him that the dog is really a chicken. The remainder of the cartoon is usually consumed by Dawg and Leghorn alternately assuring Henery that the other is a chicken and encouraging him to attack the “chicken” mercilessly. At one point, Henery figures out that Foghorn is a chicken and attempts to take him home to eat. Foghorn tells Henery, that a pheasant would taste so much better than an old chicken. He tells him that Barnyard Dawg is really a pheasant, and shows him where the pheasant lives, which is really Dawg’s house. It’s a funny story but has some real life lessons in it.

I thought I would share a few things to remember before chicken hawking:

1. Learn to crawl before you walk. Mother knows best. If Mother says eat a worm, I advice you to do it. It could be that his digestive system couldn’t handle chicken yet.

2. Disobedience and Disrespect are both a slippery slope and downhill spiral of trouble. Henery left the covering and protection of his parents. He departed from under the ark of safety payed for and provided for him. When you move from under the umbrella of safety that God provides, it will rain on you.

3. God’s Grace and Mercy can still find us where our ignorance may lead us. Henery could have possibly fell into the hands of evil predators. Instead, he met Foghorn and Barnyard Dawg. Neither of them sought to take advantage of Henery, but they did in fact make a fool out of him. Thank God for covering us when we were vunerable to predators.

4. Prior to departure, know your prey!! Before you set out, know where you are going. How can you be a hunting chicken hawk but have no clue what a chicken looks like? As much as we may laugh at Henery, we all are guilty of hunting without all of the pertinent information. If he would have been patient, I’m sure his parents would have trained him in chicken hunting. I assume that class would have covered chicken recognition and chicken trapping 101.

5. What you don’t know, an evil person
will gladly teach you. Ultimately, it will be to your own demise and it may cost you your life.

In closing, Open your eyes!! You can learn a lot from the prodigal chicken hawk!!