This appeared in the Newsreel audio magazine this month. I have printed it for your enjoyment.below there is an audio file of me reading the piece.
In case you are wondering, this was a true story and I did make little socks with candy this year.
The case of the stinky chickens
No, I do not live on a farm or in the country. I am talking about knitted and felted chickens.
Each year I try to come up with a small felted ornament for my visually challenged friends. I like to include more than one sense for their enjoyment. One year I made bells with ringers in each. This year I decided to make holiday sachet chickens. I bought the liquid scents of cloves and orange and measured 10 drops of each scent into the stuffing of the little chickens before I sewed them closed.
Well, I made over 30 little chicks and they were smelling up my home. I placed them on the sun porch a month before I was to send them so they might not be Speech onstrong smelling.
I Brailled my cards to go with the chickens and mailed them to our chat leader to distribute the cards.
Speech She called me 10 days after I had mailed the chicken and cards to inform me that the smell of those 30 plus chickens were overwhelming. She couldn’t take the smell even in the garage. I told her to put them outside to air them out. Well, it rained and the envelopes that held the cards and chickens got wet. She sent them back to me.
The chickens were in plastic bags but the envelopes fell apart. The cards were on heavier card stock and I could dry them out.
It was now two months since I wrote the cards and I thought that the cards were all the same. So I sent the best ones off to people that sent me their regular mailing address.
The chickens were well received but several on the friends noted that their cards were named for someone else. I had labeled the names of the envelopes and I didn’t check each card.
The funniest switch was a older Jewish woman that said her card was addressed to Rabbi Lenny. She said that she didn’t know that she had been promoted!
I had several friends ask if I could take the smell out of the their chicken. I opened the chickens,changed the filling and washed them. They had little or no odor.
I am starting to think of next year’s project. I will try the sense of taste perhaps . A knitted sock with a piece of candy anyone?
traveling up and down the blind highway 