Kentucky Fried Science

A Fable

by Kenneth (Oba) Mc Sween

Once upon a time at a bio-engineering lab in a city called Frankfort there was a team of research scientists, one of whom was named Dr. Ripley Talon. Dr. Talon and his colleagues made a ground breaking discovery involving genetically facilitated memory as applied to embryonic chickens.

These chicken eggs were in incubation units and very near to hatching. The experiment involved inducing these creatures to tap with their beaks on their inner shells in a sequential manner that sounded very much like counting. This caused quite a stir in scientific circles when word got around that Dr. Talon and his cohorts could actually genetically “teach” embryonic chickens to mimic tabulation!

One day Dr. Talon sat daydreaming in his office engaging a fantasy in which his experiment resulted in exclusive features in all the elite scientific journals, replete with generous research grants, etc. While this was occurring, he neglected to monitor the thermal range control on his chicks incubator and they hatched far before schedule, rendering his particular experiment a failure. However, the other scientists involved in this endeavor having minded their duties, each ended up with a massive grant and were included in a prestigious cover story in Scientific American. Dr Talon’s incompetence unfortunately led to the termination of his employment… The moral:

Don’t hatch your chickens before they count!