Never Eat Your Lunch in Front of Hungry Chooks

This morning after I had made my breakfast I decided to go outside to eat on the verandah. I had quite forgotten that I had let the chooks out early today.

Chooks don't ask for more in the way Oliver did in Charles Dickens's famous tale.

Chook behavior is not moderated by factors such as Oliver's knowledge that 'they' did have some more up their sleeves.

If the chooks see it they want it.

So I had to break a crumb or two away from each of my gluten free johnny cakes and throw it as far away from me as possible to keep them away from my breakfast (brunch) for a maximum amount of time.

The chooks are all more or less the same size (dependent upon their breed). They don't seem to have the propensity to get fat by storing reserves for leaner times. Food is either there or it's not there. They don't hoard it away for rainy days.

So wanting my Johnny cakes was a matter of preference for them; for whatever reason they preferred them over other available scratchings and pickings so much so that they were prepared to run far and race and haggle each other in their quest..

I don't think Oliver was hoping to get fat by asking for more. He was merely hungry from being underfed by those mean folks who controlled the food supply. Dickens's tale was more about human greed.

There are many animals who do not suffer from greed and they are all more or less the same size as each other. The chooks would not have eaten as much Johnny cake as I could throw their way. They would have eventually left the crumbs for other itinerant rodents and birds.

The fact that us humans have the propensity to effectively store all sorts of 'useful' things as well as store body fat for imagined leaner times up ahead has led us into all kinds of evil behaviours.

If your wish is to eliminate thieving then don't own something someone else either envies or needs. If the other person had the means to procure what it is they are envying then they wouldn't steal it.

Stealing is not an inherent human tendency as it is counterproductive to culture. You've all heard the saying "honor among thieves" I'm sure. I've known enough thieves to know that if they had other methods for accruing that which they steal they would never steal.

Remember not to eat your lunch in front of hungry chooks!!

And please busy yourself by making our world more equitable and fair in some way.

Keep posted.