h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry Mala, I've been reading the thread but I'm not currently in a position to go back through the posts (Give me 30 mins and I may be able to ) Are the horns made by removing the feathery bits (veins?) from a feather and sharpening the middle bit (stem?) of a feather on a chicken's head? I don't know what a cockerel's crest is "made from" but would one be able to strip the feathers and sharpen quill-type-horns?

(Please forgive my leaf/feather synonymity of description.)

Gallus Gallus Domesticus.

Right, mala? Putting on my birdwatchers hat...............

That would put our 'chicken amongst the Gallinules. The Gallinules are the Moorhen family of birds, not your common-or-garden chickens........

(confused)

Unless this one had a split sear at front of its bill....



'g'

SUMMARY:

The peasant could have been sentenced to beheadal by the judge but wasn't and the peasant was glad to see a (horned) chicken's head. The peasant knew that chicken was for dinner (*possibly* as soup) but the important thing was that the chicken was dead; the chicken's head wasn't important per se.

We need to think about the "type" of chicken "in that time and place".

Is that a reasonable (though perhaps not reasoned) summary?

was it sired by a dragon

I'm not a birdwatcher, gandalfstwin, but I know that, in latin, gallus is 'cock', gallina is 'hen' and gallinaceus is'of poultry'.

I've also had a peek in my dictionary and it tells me that a moor-cock/hen is a red grouse (Lagopus Scoticus)

Wow, a summary that's managed to leave out most of my clues But that's right so far.

It's a plain old chicken. It has been slaughtered deliberately for the purposes of dinner-making.

The horns are not made from feathers. A cock's crest is made of soft tissue with a lot of blood vessels running through it; when angry, the bird can set it up hydraulically by pumping it full of blood, like another organ that I don't have to explain. Hens have smaller combs.

The horns on this chicken are hard.

have the been surgicaly implanted??

was this a chicken that came last at a fancy dress competition, the penalty for which was death?

At last, Taff is getting somewhere!

Yes, they were surgically implanted.

Why? And what are they?

were they to acuse someone of being a witch

Eh?

they were put in by ray harryhausen to use in a film

We're talking several centuries before film was invented.

were they bone implants

its a dinosaur, I presume

OK, I'm now handing out the threatened penalties for claiming it's anything other than a chicken!

Bone might be involved, but it's not a bone implant, as such.

is the word "horn" used in the sense of things animals use to poke other animals, or in the sense of noisemakers (such as those installed in cars)?

No, not in the musical sense.

The horns are two protrusions on the head, with pointy, horny ends.

why would anyone surgically implant two hard pointy things onto a chicken's head? to read brainwaves, perhaps? ( unlikely, if this story took place long before films.)

were the horns made of metal?

The man was supposed to be beheaded, but wasn't.......

Perchance, was the chicken made a scape-goat, and was beheaded in the mans place???




'g'