You can get a cluck-cluck in bawk-bawk these days.

I swear, you're allowed to call yourself "Doctor" with just about any kind of cock-amamie thing these days. I'd cry, "Fowl," but it probably wouldn't do any good. At least I'm not too chicken to post about it.

Ebenezer Otu-Nyarko is coop-ed up as a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut. His research project is understanding chicken talk. He's hung microphones in a poultry barn to record all the chicken gossip. He wants to understand how "cluck-cluck" is different from "bawk-bawk." 

Now just eggs-actly how does he hope to feather his nest with this information? Well, if he can determine when the chicken is stressed, he can have it trigger an alarm that will get the farmer out of bed to check on it. Just brood about that great invention for a few minutes.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think chicken farmers are already pretty adept at figuring out when the chickens are upset. My family has raised some chickens, and we could tell when their squawks were out of the ordinary. I'm sure Ebenezer is not a birdbrain, but I have to wonder about the professors who approved this research. I also wonder how much taxpayer money is going into this project. It could be that the yolk's on us.

"Learning chickens' language." The Dallas Morning News; June 20, 2009; p. 7A.