“Boys could you come catch a louse chicken for me?” Grammy yelled at us from upstairs. “Sure” Taylor, Wyatt, Landon and I groan back.
“Which one of you wants to go” I ask, trying to get one of them to do it
“Why don’t you?” Landon says.
“Fine” I retort and as I head up the stairs one of them yelled “Hey Hayden, I dare you to bring the chicken back in the house without Grammy seeing you.” I don’t even bother responding as I head up the stairs and into the yard I know that it wasn’t a dare at all. When one of your cousins gives you a dare, you have to do it. That is the only thing that will gain you any respect from Taylor Landon and Wyatt who are my older and cooler cousins. It is always best to stick to them because hanging around with them always leads to having fun, even if that ends badly (which means someone will inevitably get hurt).
After I make it out the door and into the yard I have to find the chicken. And as all they really do is strut around the yard showing off that they go out of their coop they aren’t that hard to find. Once I found the chicken I have to reawaken the skill of catching chickens which I use every time I come to my grandparent’s farm in Idaho. Catching a chicken is very straight forward, it is like playing a game of football but you are the huge 200+ pound pro and the chicken is the ball rolling across the ground taking weird, unexpected turns. Using this analogy I have the ball caught in about three minutes. Now comes the tricky part, getting the chicken inside a house where animals are not allowed without my grandma seeing. As I head back inside with the chicken clutched to my side, I duck into the stair well so Grammy wouldn’t see me and yell to her “I got it.” I hear a muffled “thank you” as I close the door and race downstairs to face my cousins. The look of shock on my cousins faces when I show them the chicken is priceless. It gets even better when I throw it in the closet.
“I should have taken that bet” Taylor says to Landon,
“We didn’t think you would do it” Wyatt says.
“Yeah I think I caught that when you mentioned the bet” I respond with a hint of sarcasm in my voice. “Now to make this fair I think you guys all need to go get something” I say.
“So you want to have a dare contest?” asks Landon.
“Yes” I reply smiling “are you guys game”? I ask hopefully jeering them on a little with my voice “yeah” “sure” “why not” they all say responding in their own way. “OK Landon I dare you to go and get a cat and put in Grammy’s room”
“a cat that’s it?”
“Well if you want something harder then why don’t you get the dog and a cat, any kittens that you find and you can put them anywhere upstairs.”
“OK I’ll be back in a bit” he says as he is leaving the room. After a few minute of me just sitting there watching Taylor and Wyatt playing Halo I decide to get up and check on the chicken. It is hiding down in the corner and looks kind of traumatized from being brought inside and locked in a closet.
Out of nowhere there is a rapid tapping of feet coming down stairs and there is my cousin with the dog thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Everybody would have heard her barking if I had put her upstairs especially if I’d put her in a room with a cat. Look at my arms that momma cat has some sharp claws, I'm bleeding” Landon says. “OK go put her in the potato cellar so no one hears her and stop being a baby” Wyatt says. As Landon disappears through the door into the room which leads to the potato cellar he shouts out “Wyatt your next”
“OK what” he responds in a completely glum, deep voice. “You get go get a lamb and put it in umm in the upstairs bathroom”
“Fine but I will be a while getting it, bringing it in sneaking up the stairs all without anyone seeing me”.
So we pass away the time playing and once we hear him shouting from outside we all got up to go help him. There seemed to be something a little too conspicuous about 4 teenagers running up the stairs carrying a tiny little sheep then locking the bathroom door and all coming back down. So we decided that we would have two of us would go up and the other two would stay down at the bottom and keep anyone from going up. After we successfully got the sheep into the bathroom we all ran downstairs to be safe and hopefully be away from any blame.
“Taylor you’re next” says Wyatt
“Great what part of Noah’s ark do I have to fetch?” Taylor responds
“Go get a horse” Wyatt says
“What!” Taylor yells “I have to go get a horse where am I supposed to put it?” “Just walk it in through the front door, it’s not like it has never been done before uncle Jason and Dell did it your dare will be over once it is out” Wyatt says smirking at Landon and I. He looks like he is trying really hard not to keep in his laughter at what Taylor has to do.
“Fine I will go get a horse but I'm just bringing it in for a second then it is going straight back out” we all agree this sounds great. All of us head up stairs because we want to see this. Not only is Taylor going to catch a horse single handed he is going to bring it inside. It takes him a few tries to get the horse with the twine but he ends up winning and brings it up to the house. It takes a serious amount of coaxing and pulling to get the horse to come in. When it finally does come in we all start clapping and cheering the only problem is that Grammy comes around the corner right then and sees the horse. She stares at it for a full five seconds and then says “Taylor what are you doing” without missing a beat Taylor turns on me and says
“it’s not my fault Hayden started it” you know how I said that every time I hang out with my cousins somebody gets hurt, let’s just say that this time it was Taylor.