The Hidden Mountain Pass

You scramble up the steep incline making use of any rocks or bushes that were in the way to pull yourself up. A couple of times you nearly slid back down but finally you squeeze between two big boulders and find a sheltered little clearing. In front of you there is a chicken listening to the ground. Or at least that's what it seemed to be doing.

You stare at it for a bit, then step closer. At the movement of your feet the little alien bird seemed to get excited, listening even more closely. You realized it had been following your movements up the incline through the ground. You walk right up to so it could see you. It's head popped up and it looked back and forth between you and the ground. Then with a little squawk it ran off.

You follow it through the clearing until you loose sight of it. You keep going, hoping to pick up the trail again when you see movement out of the corner of your eye.

Ah, the chicken was hiding in a...jack'o'lantern? Weird, where did that come from? As you peered more carefully under the pumpkin hat, you realized it wasn't the same chicken after all. The big eyes stared back at you, unblinking, until suddenly the chicken disappeared into the pumpkin. Bending down, you could see it was still watching you through the jack'o'lantern's eyes.

Noise, chicken noise in particular drew you away from the little pumpkin house. There as some sort of squabbling or argument going on. You follow your ears and easily find the source of the disturbance.

Again you thought, weird. This time it wasn't Halloween but Christmas being reenacted. One chicken was trying to get another to kiss it under a sprig of mistletoe, but the other wanted nothing to do with it. A third held a piece of pine with a bulb hanging off it. It looked like it wanted to be anywhere other than where it was, but for some reason had to stay and hold the branch.

And there was a fourth. This one had a big santa hat on and was crouching out of sight of the other three watching what was going on with great interest. Sure enough, it wasn't long before the two "lovers" got so frustrated with each other that an outright fight broke out. The one with the branch decided to run for it as the feathers started to fly.

You decide that it was actually a pretty smart chicken after all, so you do the same.