Bone From A Soup
Scientists say that soft-tissue has linked Tyranosaurus Rex to the modern chicken!!
The story goes like this: One day in the February of 2007, in a lab far, far away – the Outer Hebrides kind of far away – a scientist was mopping up after some chicken blood experiments when she found she was out of paper-towels. Being a resourceful young scientist and, more pertinently, a hay-fever sufferer, she took a soft tissue (the lab won’t say if it was Kleenex or Co-op’s own) from her bag and mopped up the remainder of the blood.
Just then, another scientist, a handsome male one, burst through the doors and said “Oh ____,” (name witheld until a related divorce case is settled) “I must have you now! Don’t you know you drive me crazy?”
“Oh!” she said.
The pair then had some wild thrashing sex on the workbench, pausing only to shift the bunsen burners and for the lady scientist to fling the bloodied soft-tissue away with abandon. The coitus completed, the pair went home to their respective spouses for the weekend with work and chicken-diseases far from their thoughts.
But all weekend long, the forgotten soft tissue lay on the window-sill where it had fallen. And deep within the moist, sun-warmed crevices of the tissue, something was stirring. Something was stretching. Something was trying out its tiny, tiny limbs.
The following Monday, the scientist returned to her lab and was perturbed to see the tissue lying in the window – usually she was far more tidy around her work-space. Flushing a little at the memory of the tissue-flinging circumstances, she walked over to the windowsill to dispose of it. But something made her hesitate. It was her Scientific Curiosity: the very same Scientific Curiosity that had made Alexander Fleming hesitate all these years before at his windowsill, and the same Scientific Curiosity that had formed the bulk of the defence argument in the Murdo Macauley sheep-rape rap.
She peered at the tissue and what she saw took her breath right away and wouldn’t give it back until she concentrated really hard on breathing again. For, lying, nestled in the soft folds of that soft, soft tissue was a teeny-tiny baby dinosaur.
“Goooroar goo goo!!” it roared at her, adorably. A T Rex! She recognized it immediately, not because she was a scientist, but because she was a mother and had stepped on one only that morning. Weeping tears of incredulous joy at this miraculous new life, this happy accident that had led to such unimagined compressing of the Ages in a tissue, and the pictures of herself in Nature and Hello! magazine that her discovery was bound to precipitate, she ran with the news to The Authorities who ran to the Media who ran back to the lab and took loads of pictures.
The baby dinosaur was named Spike in a BBC phone-in competition and was sent to live with his own kind in a special observation chicken-coop in Uig. There he flourished, getting up to all sorts of mischief with his little chick cousins, who, being children, stopped and stared at his scales and tail but didn’t see that his being different was a good reason not to play with him. Time passed and everyone marvelled at how the little dinosaur grew and displayed appropriate social chicken behaviours with the others.
All was going well until one day, something snapped in Spike’s lizard hindbrain and he bit the heads off everyone in his new family in such a savage blood’n'beak’n'fluff bath that some witnesses to the carnage are said to have sworn off poultry for life.
Spike, now 20 feet tall with acne and a roar that was squeaky one minute and earth-movingly unearthly the next, tore through the observatory walls, thinking about how he needed some space and had to get out of here, man. He’d been restless for a while but the scientists and other chickens though it was just “his age.” But it was more than that.
You see, a week prior to this, one of the scientists came to work with some fish he’d poached caught in Loch Erisort. Spike had caught a whiff of something, a deep, ancient base-note smell almost overpowered by the high, acrid fish stench, but there, definitely there. Something SAME was out there, Spike sensed. Something ancient and scaly like him was in that loch!
“Spikey go Loch Erisort”, said his tiny brain and his yellow eyes blinked. “Wait! But they so kind to Spikey here” his pea-sized intellect reminded him, “And Spikey have his eye on dat Miranda chick. No no, Spikey stay and see if he get laid but not like egg.”
Alas for them all, on the Thursday, Miranda snubbed him. Feelings of confusion and rejection overwhelmed his primitive bird-brain and on the Friday he broke out of the coop, leaving nothing but regret and feathers in his wake.
He was shot dead before he’d even reached Miavaig.
The End.
Can you spot the deliberate error? Ah go on, you can so! I don’t mind telling you that I’m hopping around in glee waiting to tell you. It’s all made up! Yes, it’s incredible but the above is all untrue! Except for the afternoon delight amongst the test-tubes and round-bottomed flasks. That bit was real.
No what really happened was that scientists generated a chicken from the soft-tissue of a dinosaur-bone. Dinosaurs bones are full of snot, you see, hence the need for a tissue. It’s not really snot, of course; it’s just a bit of leftover primeval soup lurking in the bones. Nowadays thrifty cooks make soup from bones but, in the way-way-back times, the bones came from the soup. And there was no cheating with Stock cubes either. God’s a very able cook and had the amino acid base pre-made and packed in his freezer, all ready to go.
April 16th, 2007 at 8:25 am
The amount of stuff I almost learn on this Blog.I don’t believe in science and certainly not in chickens now dinosaurs I do know about, the last one of them that I saw was in the Congo in 1937 very hard to kill but then we cooked it up and it tasted like scientists if they actually existed.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:55 am
The mistake is that there would be no regret in his/its wake.
Evil fucking bird thing.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Those workbench things are the height of a kitchen counter, hardly a spot for wild thrashing. And that suggests an equilibrium problem, distinct from an ecumenical one, a la Fr. Jack.
April 16th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Your tales have it all Sam.Sex,science,dinosaurs,teenage angst,poultry and poaching.A superb cautionary tale of the enormous consequences of a one-night (who know? this might have been a regular thing)stand betwixt the bonking boffins.
Oh..and I thought that the scientists having sex was the deliberate error.Everything else was so plausible.
April 16th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
T Rex — Tastes like chicken!
And it would account for how bloodthirsty and vicious chickens are. Everytime I eat one, I think “It was me or you, you bastid!”
April 16th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
What happened with Miranda’s divorce case?
April 16th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I really wanted to believe…
April 16th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Old K, After they’d got all the bits from Spike’s body that they needed for research, and before he went off, the scientists had a beach barbecue and did him up lovely with a nice chicory-honey glaze which Mrs Matheson BSc. had brought from home. They recorded their observations of the meal as scientists are apt, and concluded that while Spike did indeed taste of chicken the texture was more of tire. A 24 hour marinade would have been better to tenderise him.
Safe T, Spike was most assuredly a “him.” As he grew towards adolescence he was spending more and more time in his room at the coop, muttering Miranda! Miranda! and shrieking “NO! DON’T COME IN! I’m um…I’m busy.
Vince, they had a step. In Lewis our copious pubs lead to questions of equilibrium every Saturday night, yielding to ecumenical ones and matters of suffering, in church with your mammy the next day.
Hangar Queen, beneath their white coats and stern up-dos, scientists are as randy a bunch as you can find; the female scientists too. Whenever a conference on Something Squishy In A Petri Dish And Its Consequences for Bats or the like comes to town, the town and for 2 counties over are so.ld out of condoms before lunch leaving a prophylactic wilderness for the locals. In scientific terms a conference like this is known as a clusterf**k.
Sparrow, you’re right, the only good chicken is a roast one. Spike tasted the chickens that day, and was surprised at how plump the hormones make the breasts. Little did he imagine people called Murdo and Williamina would be picking him out of their teeth soon, comparing him unfavourably with a capon. No imagination these dinosaurs, and they don’t know about guns, neever.
Brianf, ha-ha I see what you did there, ya devil. Luckily I’ve had my morning cocaine-on-toast and can remember that Miranda is a hen and the Protestant kirk in Lewis views chicken-marriage as an Abomination. Abomination #79456 if I can remember my Periodic Table of The Abominations. Chicken divorce is just an unspeakable act of depravity and abhorrence. If the church forbids it for humans they see no reason to let the chickens off the hook. The scientists were Unitarians so the divorce in question was mainly a legal matter for them. She did get her mug in Hello! though.
Jali, I know, hun, I know. I felt exactly the same about the Mary on the grilled cheese sandwich. Our Lady Of The Midnight Snack I was calling her for a while before my world came tumbling in.
April 16th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Not full of snot you say? Hummm.
The only good chicken is a dead one, with its feet and head still on it. I hate the pink chicken on offer over here in the super markets, flavourless muck. In Barcelona I used to buy mine whole and the meat is a rich yellow and full of flavour. Oh many’s the happy Saturday afternoon I spent drunk as a lord and chasing the cats about with chicken feet.
April 16th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Oh, I thought the unusual part was you being in the Outer Hebrides.
April 16th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
fmc, chicken is best prepared drunk as a lord, isn’t it. Now just tell me you’re not one of these cooks who uses “the whole bird” or makes feet soup. Did you have to pluck? I don’t think I’ve ever asked you why you were in Barcelona.
joe, it’s been a year since I was there, but I got my reports straight from the horse’s mouth, for the lady scientist was my first cousin Catriona. Her paramour was also my cousin but on a different side! Don’t judge us! Um. We have a limited population! And any port in a storm etc. Do you know how many storms we have in the Western Isles?
April 17th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Did you just insert some gratuitous sex into a story, Sam? I can’t see how the human jiggy helped the little dinosaur-chick get born.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:07 am
It sounds like chav heaven. Imagine the Snack-Box you could make up with one of those babies. You can open a whole new fast-food chain: Kentucky Fried Dinosaur, or KFD if you prefer.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I once met a velociraptor.
Provocative cunt he was.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:05 am
No No, no feet soup, I just chased the cats with those things. Puddy in particular would go stark raving mental if you skidded on across the tiles towards her.
I lived in Barcelona Darin’, nigh on 5 years, just off Passage de Gracia. Sigh, it were right goodly fun too (and also where I discovered my fondess for Havana rum).
April 17th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Crocodiles taste like chicken, and CROCODILES ARE DINOSAURS!!!!
It all makes sense now…
And thankyou for the lovely story, as well as for advocating for REAL stock. I don’t have any respect for those ghastly stockcubes and nobody else should. Death to stockcubes, shoot them as the run for the loch! But don’t cook them and eat them, because that would defeat the purpose.
Oh chicken feet taste good, too!
Wahoo!!!
April 17th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Loved the story. Scientists bonking like crazy people, scary dinosaurs and a strong moral. This needs to be made into a film. I would volunteer to play the sexed-up scientist, but i’m not tall enough to get my parts onto a lab bench. Actually, please just re-write it so the naughty bit happens in a 5 star hotel instead.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I wonder if there’s any connection to sars.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Ohmigawd, there is a Dr Schwitzer at North Corolina state U reading your mind !!!! see Economist Mag’
April 17th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Nanas. Giggle. Yes, yes I did.
Bock, the drumsticks might be a problem. Did you know that in the states they tried calling Kentucky fried Chicken, Kitchen Fresh Chicken to make it sound more healthy? Same crap, same grease-fest, just a different name is all. It didn’t fly. On account of its being fried. But the name didn’t fly either.
Twenty, hi. Come in, pull up a bean-bag. Blimey, do I need to straighten up now there’s a famous blogger in the joint? No, no I think if I just put out some peanuts and stout you’ll be right, yeah? Thought so. I agree, velociraptors are bastids, always in a hurry, no time to say hello. Slowpokesauruses, now there’s a good dinosaur, give you the time of several days, they will. Sometimes you wish they’d let up actually, but you know, always quick on their feet when it’s their round.
Fmc, Passage de Gracia sounds like it’s either in a charming, olde worlde, corner of Barca where cats scratch themselves lazily in the sun, or in the red-light district, where prostitutes scratch themselves lazily in the sun. I’m assuming you were in the former, although we all have our dark pasts.
You lucky, lucky woman. I’d love to go there, one day. Did Puddy make nice with the Spanish cats? Show them the ways of the Irish?
Carolyn, gasp! Your comment was tootling along very nicely there until you said “chicken feet taste good.” I’m sure it says in the bible that thou shalt not eat fowl feet. God slipped it into that bit where the animals were going in 2 by 2. “2 giraffes,” God said, “2 fieldmice, and no eating hen toes either, it’s unholy, 2 gibbons…” A rather successful insertion, I thought; it hardly interrupts the narrative flow at all, but then he is God.
Asym42, scientists do bonk like crazy people! You’d think there would be a lot more precision involved with them but no, leave that to the geography majors who are famously uptight. Scientist sex is mad, crazy weasel-sex. It breaks up the day as they wait for experiments to incubate; it’s either crazy weasel sex or a chat by the coffee-machine.
flic, hi! Thanks for stopping by and saying hello. There’s some beer over there by Twenty Major, but you better be quick, like. He’s a thirsty fella. Come to think of it, they all are round here. All diseases are connected in some mysterious buggy way. I learnt that in Disease class.
Vince, There is? I thought North Carolina had been blown away in the storms. I’m glad to hear it’s doing OK. Off for a gander at the Economist. Schwitzer you say, eh? That’s a very important sounding name. Cool!
April 17th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Sorry to hear Spike was killed by mankind. Another Dino, Rover, lived with a lovely old lady until meeting a similar end.
Old Mrs. Flintstone went to the cupboard
To get her poor T Rex a bone
But when she bent over
Over came Rover
And gave her a bone of his own.
Poor Rover had to be put down … a few years later when Mrs. Flintstone got rheumatism.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Yes, it?s incredible but the above is all untrue! Except for the afternoon delight amongst the test-tubes and round-bottomed flasks. That bit was real.
Crafty, you are, Sam. Hiding your salacious bits among frivolity like that. No one will ever suspect.
Cheers.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Spike, now 20 feet tall with acne and a roar that was squeaky one minute and earth-movingly unearthly the next
I totally went out with a guy like that once. Total boor, but he really liked Meg Ryan movies. Figure that one out.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Sneezy, you filthy bard, Spike wasn’t killed by mankind. He was killed by man unkind.
(Is dragged off screaming by the schmaltz police)
(Escapes back to comment-box by means of low-cunning and a pointy stick.)
Rand’, WINK!!
Kara, whatever happened to Meg Ryan? She’d had a really bad trout-pout treatment last time I saw her but that was ages ago. It didn’t work out with Total Boor guy, eh. Just as well – they’re the sort to flip out at 35 and become Neat Nazis which just makes you look bad in front of his mam. Inside Total Boors is a Neat Nazi he’s trying to hide from himself. It’s a denial thing. Like the worst homophobics really being gay deep down. It’s the Partial Boors who are the lost causes. They’ll be clipping their toenails on the coffee-table ’til they die.
April 18th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Well he didn’t get any premonitions about Loch Ness did he . Proof, I venture, that the monster is mythical. And Sam for future reference please bear in mind that thrashing sex on work benches = splinters in bums. Not nice!
April 18th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I heard dinosaur taste like pork, but what do I know.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
PS look up Josh Ritter’s “Bone of a Song” it’s a gret track
April 18th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Apprentice – Humans taste like pork. All other previously untried species taste like chicken. I should know – I worked in MacDonalds.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I’m not sure about the rest of the story, but the BBC phone-in was certainly a fake. In reality they asked the producer’s domestic help to come up with a name after the phone-lines melted on a particularly hot summers day. The domestic had a goldfish of the same name, and lacked the imagination to come up with anything more original.
How do I know this…?
My uncle George worked for the BBC and once overheard a colleague of the producer talking about it in the pub.
April 18th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Pat, it didn’t do much for the petri dish experiments either. Whole new cultures grew in them after that episode. Spike had caught a whiff not of Nessie but of the Beast of Loch Erisort, a creature with blood so cold, and scales so black that it can only live at the very bottom of that deep, dark loch.
Apprentice, what do you know? Hmm. I think you protest too much – how many dinosaurs have you murdered for meat, you, you blood-thirsty saur-chomper? (I’ll have a scout around for the song.)
Sneezy, humans taste like pork, everything else tastes like chicken, but, as fmc points out, some supermarket chicken doesn’t even taste like itself. I think Scottish humans might taste a wee bit gamier than other humans. And maybe as if they’d been marinated in strong liquors prior to cooking.
McCrumble, how’s the balloch? Are you getting any sleep yet? Before he met me, the Problem Husband had a goldfish called Fluffy.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I remember when my son was all spotty and squeaky. Thank god no one shot him before he had a chance to change.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Eryl, you were caught by my spam filter which has done that before so don’t worry, it’s not you! I pushed aside a couple of vi*gra adds and there you were.
I’ve just been over at yours and seen your handsome son. I am very glad noone shot him too but I’m assuming he wasn’t into Chickenophagia. It’s a sad reflection on the times and the last few days, especially, that I don’t know if you’re referring to the post or to the Virginia Tech mess. If it’s the latter, I don’t mean to be flippant, it’s just my way of handling stuff. Times like these just make you want to hold your children tight. The more information that comes out about this guy, the more you wonder why red flags weren’t up all over the place about him before now.
Anyway, welcome! It’s nice to meet you.
April 19th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
“Is anyone else having a problem with my blog?” you ask.
Yeah me. Nothing technical, I justs has a problem with it, right?
April 19th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Maroon, you looking at me? Are YOU looking at me? Are you looking at ME? You LOOKING at me? Don’t be startin’ wid me Mroon, y’hear. I’ll get my homies on yo ass. Just as soon as I gets me some homies dey guhna be all over yo sorry ass. So you better be’s watching it (yo ass) cuz dey be comin’ for it. Oh yeah. Uh-huh.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:29 am
…heard the same story and it checks out. I have it on good authority that it was Kleenex. The regular kind, not the slimy ones with skin softening aloe vera.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
Joel, hello, I missed this comment til now, somehow. Skin-softening aloe-vera tissues are a revolution! I will duel with anyone who says otherwise! If not for them I would have rubbed my nose clean away with the miserable cold I’ve got right now.