Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

“Holy shit!” Rich spluttered, taking a step in front of Beau when he saw it. Then again, it’s not like you could miss it because I really wasn’t kidding when I said it was fucking huge. It would fill thirty buckets at KFC and still have pieces left over for people to snack on. “What the fuck is that?”

Copying his move, I placed myself between Lily and the big beast, trying to get over what I was seeing. “That’s..”

“Original recipe? Extra crispy?” Rich interrupted, his eyes not leaving the animal as it walked up to the door of its enclosure and stared out at us.

“Chick-fil-A?” I suggested.

Sighing, Lily tried to get past me to where it was standing, it’s eyes not leaving us. “His name is Bojangles, and he’s a blue Jersey Giant.”

Refusing to let her get closer to it, I looked over at Rich who was doing the same with Beau. “Babe, the Giants are New York, but I guess that includes Jersey, too. But all the same, I don’t think you can get away with naming a chicken after…”

“That’s his breed,” Beau snapped, losing her patience with Rich and shoving him out the way. “What is it with you two?”

“Have you seen the size of that thing?” Rich asked incredulously. “It’s the size of a fucking dog!”

I was starting to think my brain had been connected to my dick though, because yet again it took it a stupid length of time to make the connection between the animal’s name, it’s species, and food. “Oh, fuck me,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes with both hands. “You named it after Bojangles, didn’t you?”

“Actually,” Lily sounded sheepish as she replied, “I named it after the song. It wasn’t until I visited a friend in Charlotte and went to the restaurant last year that I realized my mistake.”

I wasn’t familiar with the song, but I sure as hell was familiar with Bojangles chicken. “And you didn’t make the connection between King Ferdinand the chicken and KFC until today?”

Wincing, she absent-mindedly scratched her hand as she looked between the two birds. That was answer enough for all of us.

“Is there something wrong with it? Like, does it have a thyroid problem or something?” Rich asked, looking back over at chicken Kong.

“Was it exposed to radiation even?” I added, looking for a way to explain the size of the second chicken.

“No, it’s the breed. He’s kind of at the max of his growth now,” Lily replied, sounding relieved. No shit, if he grew any bigger, kids could ride on its back.

Squatting down in front of him, Beau stuck her finger in and started stroking the flappy vagina skin under its chin.

“That’s called his wattle,” Lily informed us all for some reason.

“Huh?”

“You called it flappy vagina skin, so I told you it’s called a wattle.”

It was no surprise that I’d said it out loud. I was staring into the eyes of a chicken left over from the Jurassic era, with what definitely looked like the skin from a vagina under its beak.

“How big is he now?” Beau asked, chuckling nervously as the rooster lifted its beak into the air and made some sort of pterodactyl crowing noise.

Not only did it look creepy, but it sounded creepy too. Apparently Rich was in agreement with this because he looked up at the sky and turned around like he expected a flock of the things to start dive bombing us.

“He’s twenty-five inches tall, and weighs in at sixteen pounds.”

It would take a lot of fries and ‘slaw to complete the meal it would make, that’s for sure!

“Lily got him when he was a baby, too,” Beau turned around from her vagina skin tickling to tell us. “Her mom knew someone who said they’d had baby chickens hatch on their farm, and they didn’t have space for them all…”

“No wonder,” Rich muttered under his breath.

Either she was unphased by it, or hadn’t heard it, because Beau continued, “So her mom took one and gave it to her for her birthday.”

“She also gave me Snickers,” Lily smiled, looking over my shoulder at the side of her house.

I was going to regret it, I knew I would, but I had to…

“Who’s Snickers?”* * *“You have a pet squirrel,” I repeated for the third time, watching the animal as it flew around its enclosure, hidden away at the side of Lily’s house.

“Gorgeous isn’t he? I have to keep his cage separate from King Ferdinand and Bojangles’s cages because he gets them riled up.”

Looking at me over her head, Rich raised an eyebrow. “How does he do that?”

“He was constantly running around…”

“And he was throwing his nuts at them, too,” Beau added, interrupting Lily.

Both Rich and I looked back at the animal, a very specific part of the animal at that. It was impossible not to notice them, they were just there. And they were absolutely fucking massive.