Chickens in the Mist, part the second.

More chickens, more roads.

:: OLIVER WILLIS.

Yeah Baby! After the way that chicken ran across the road, there's no way Steve Spurrier's not going to sign him for the Skins! Way to go, Ballcoach! That chicken sure looks….Mmmmmm, Britney….

:: JAMES LILEKS.

Sometimes, living in the Twin Cities, a breeze will stir out of the west, a breeze that smells of North Dakota. You can tell the North Dakota breeze from the South Dakota breeze, because it's somehow more open, more trusting. A North Dakota breeze is one you'll trust. It's the one you feel at your back as you escort your chicken across the road.

At 11:00 this morning, a certain feeling of sadness descended upon Gnat and I, that sadness that comes of the Showcase on The Price is Right ending in a double overbid, so I put down my Mac keyboard and she put down her toys and we went to Target, because we needed handsoap. The liquid kind, in the cool dispenser that's slightly less cool than the one you'll find in IKEA, but that's OK because this one was designed by Americans, not Swedes. In Sweden, the chickens don't cross the road. That's because the Swedes don't have chickens.

It was a beautiful day, so I thought I should drive Gnat out to farm country. Nice thing about the midwest is you can go in any direction to get to farm country, but I decided to go west, because at least figuratively we'd be closer to the source of that North Dakota breeze, and maybe, if we stopped for a moment along the way and the air was just right and we inhaled at just the right time, we'd be able to smell Fargo. And it wouldn't be Fargo as it is now, but the Fargo of about six hours ago when the breeze came across it; and we'd take in the aroma of a Fargo whose time has come, and gone while we were watching Bob Barker.

So Gnat and I stood there a while, drawing in deep breaths.

"Is that Fargo, Daddy?" she'd say after each one. And I would have to say, "No, that's exhaust off I-94." Or, "No, the wind shifted just then. That's Mankato." Or a hundred other places. The truth is, I've forgotten the smell of Fargo. It happens, when you live in the Twin Cities. So finally I told Gnat "Yes, that was Fargo," even though it wasn't. Because it didn't smell like chickens.

And that's when, as if sent by some other force, the lone chicken came. And there, ten feet away from us, it crossed that lonely stretch of farm country road and disappeared into the brush on the other side.

A short while later, in the car, Gnat's tiny voice came to me from her rear-facing carseat (which we also bought at Target, because the Apple Store at the Mall of America doesn't sell carseats): "Daddy, why did that chicken cross the road?"

I have no real answer for her, so I give her the classic one, the one everyone knows. "To get to the other side, sweetie."

And I don't tell her that the coyotes are especially bad this year. Gnat is too young for nightmares about coyotes.