The Evolution of the Puffer Chicken Association's Annual Egg Catapult

So, how did we come to launch blown eggs into the Whetstone with one of my miniature catapults, in an attempt to replenish the endangered Puffer Chicken population, on Eggster, the day before Easter at the Whetstone foot-bridge in downtown Brattleboro? University of Brattleboro events tend to start out with an idea which makes us laugh and inspires us to create a goofy ritual. These events become more and more layered with both silliness and deeper meaning over the years. For example, the Bring-A-Man-To-Fling-On-The-Solstice-And-Sing-Thing, started off as a simple joke. Back in 2001 we would gather to laugh over burning up a little man made out of seitan (which is expensive and delicious gluten from wheat, you can buy at any Food Co-op in Vermont) just so that we could say we attended a "Seitanic Sacrifice," with zero malevolence. But the Solstice-Fling now has a whole narrative, where we celebrate the return of the light by sending a little man made of meat alternatives over the edge of a cliff on Putney Mountain, with the idea that if more light comes back each day after that, that it means he succeeded in his mission to re-light the sun. We still laugh, but now we also sing. And we sing together at the darkest time of the year, because that is what humans need. You can check out a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ou8_1DDTcg.The Puffer-Chicken Association started with my wife Cynthia's delight at imagining a puffer chicken, a hybrid between the bizarrely self-inflating fish and the little round, fluffy dinosaur commonly mixed with mayonnaise and eaten as a meat salad. She made a digital mock-up to invent the creature which she then used to create a stencil which she cut from a binder divider and printed with house paint to give to her brother on his birthday. This was the spark that started a small t-shirt business which we now use to fund all of our free events. The first t-shirt simply had a puffer chicken on it, but we decided that such a wonderful creature needed a whole association. Up until recently the association was a loose assortment of people with t-shirts, but now we are hosting our first Puffer-Chicken Association event.Separately from all that fun, Cynthia came up with the idea of catapulting blown eggs into the Whetstone. Releasing painted eggs onto the Ames Hill Brook near her brother's family's house in Brattleboro was something we did with our nephew and his siblings. We colored the blown eggs and then floated them in a small section of the stream, following their journey and saving them from getting trapped in eddies until they passed under the stone arch of Route 9 and away. When we lost our nephew, Cynthia wanted to create a public ritual to honor the good fun we have always created as a family and offer it to the wider community. It included the idea of writing messages on the eggs, and then sending the eggs to the sea. Putting my growing collection of wooden catapults to use, which happen to be the perfect size to fling an egg, was too silly and good, to not to do again. Joy making must go on. Just before we left for Ireland, (which almost didn't happen because, well, we did everything in the wrong order, first I was shortlisted for a poetry award there, then we bought tickets, then we got the passports) we stopped in Brattleboro on our way to the airport, and launched egg after egg into the Whetstone. Each egg made a beautiful arc before hitting the water. But eggshells are weak things, and the crowd went "Oooooooooh!" when they broke on the water, but "Hurray!" when they landed intact and started floating down stream towards the mighty Kwentikw aka Connecticut River. As anyone who is familiar with the Whetstone knows, there are several waterfalls between the footbridge at the Coop and the river. Imagine our surprise and yes, imagine the yelling, when the eggs made it through the first waterfall. We watched eggs as they passed through the shoot of water that rips through the rocks and heads to the stone arch near Whetstone Station. Indeed, eggs made it to the big river, and for all we know, like a baby salmon, to the sea. That salmon reference comes in here, in part because I had two jobs when I first got to Brattleboro 25 years ago (and was sleeping on people's sofas, because I couldn't afford an apartment). I was working at the Brattleboro Food Co-op deli, and working at the fish ladder in Vernon counting all manner of fish, including giant carp and really big salmon. The giant carp came from a German carp pond at the bottom of Brook Street, in the late 1800s. The carp escaped their pond, made it through the shoot and to the mighty river, where they could grow to their true size, which, from what I saw, was bigger than a Labrador retriever. The salmon used to be so plentiful here, they could feed a civilization. Modern ways, including dams for electricity, made them extinct, and modern ways, including stocking millions of baby salmon into the big river, and constructing fish ladders, was hoped to bring them back. I was paid to stare at the window, trying to spy large salmon swimming by. And I did. But as I wrote in my reports at the time, I saw way more giant German carp, with their large googly eyeballs that they would roll towards me as I sat on the other side of the six inch thick glass pane. (I have rarely felt so seen by a wild animal). And from that experience trying to replenish our part of the world with salmon, came the idea of the mission of the Puffer-Chicken Association. We are trying to repopulate the endangered puffer-chickens. We also hope to persuade people to eat less puffer-chickens, as they are exceedingly rare, and to try instead some of the fake puffer-chicken patties we will be offering as an alternative. It is true, they taste exactly like slices of beets, and they tend to bleed all over the plate, just like a beet, (or a puffer-chicken). But, our fake puffer-chicken patties also taste just like puffer-chicken. We swear, you won't be able to tell the difference from real puffer-chicken. Join us. We will be at the foot bridge between the Coop and Flat Street at noon, on March 30, 2024, and (we like to imagine) every Eggster, until we die of old age. Children of all ages, and their colored eggs are very welcome. (please use non-toxic food color dyes). Rolf Parker-Houghton and his wife, Cynthia Parker-Houghton live in Brattleboro, Vermont with their boy. They create free events, treasure hunts, giant snow heads, and the Third Thursday Poetry Reading at the Drawing Studio in Brattleboro. You can find Puffer Chicken T-Shirts at the Harmony Gallery, online at https://www.houghtonart.com and at the annual Eggster Catapult on the day before Easter, at noon, at the pedestrian footbridge between Flat Street and the Food Co-op in Brattlbeoro.