Under the Mango Tree: 101 Tales (4)

MISSING CHICKEN

Challenge No.75 - And The Culprit Is...

Your character sets out to find who the culprit of a misdeed is and the guilty person is... not who they expected it would be.

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Meghan was home and all was not well. Not at all. She had spent the night with her granny and was back home all ready to feed the roosters. She ran happily towards the chicken coop.

She stood in shock.

One rooster was gone! How could that be?! She looked around quickly. There was no second rooster to be found.

Meghan went to find her mum.

"Do you know anything about a missing chicken?" She asked.

Mum said, "I saw a chicken on a dish."

Meghan made a note with a blue circle.

Meghan thought about what mum had told her. She said, "Well it seems we have a mystery on our hands." So, she took notes and drew a question mark.

She went about asking her questions. This time she went to daddy. Daddy told her, "When I got here, I found the cage door open."

So, she drew the cage with the door open.

Meghan took a moment to put her notes together. When she got back, she found only one rooster in the cage, so she drew the cage with the number one inside.

Once her notes were done, she went to her grandmother's house to investigate.

Granny told her, "I know nothing about a chicken. I have seen no chicken."

So, Meghan returned home and thought about her lost rooster. "Oh," she said, "... this is a mystery! The only two clues I have is that my daddy says the cage door was open and my mummy said she saw a chicken on a dish. So, what happened between the cage door being open and the chicken being on the dish?"

Will Meghan find out what happened?

Meghan sat down and thought. 'I know for a fact that mummy would not slaughter a chicken. I think the chicken was slaughtered by my daddy and we ate it for lunch. That's what I think happened.'

Meghan went back to daddy. "Mummy may have cooked it, but I want to know who slaughtered it. So, Daddy, speak now."

Daddy didn't answer.

But mummy had a question. "Would you like to taste the chicken?"

"OH!" Meghan said. "There is no way I'm eating a chicken that I took care of!"

Mum said, "But you have to grow what you eat and eat what you grow. Just like when we grow the peppers, we use it and when we grow the tomatoes and whatever. When papa grows the cucumbers, we eat it, that is what the chickens were for."

But Meghan wasn't convinced.

Mum warmed a tiny piece and offered it to her.

Meghan took a nibble. "Er ok, it tastes really good. But I didn't want you all to slaughter my rooster without telling me."

Daddy said, "Sorry. Next time we will get permission from you."

With that, Meghan solved the case of the missing rooster.

© 14 May 2020

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