chicken sneezes

The Borden family was murdered. To this day, it is unsolved. The only member of the Borden family to escape the grizzly murders of that day was Lizzie. The murders were committed during the day and the family was chopped up with an axe. Nothing was stolen from the house and Lizzie didn't see or hear anything during the grizzly crime spree.

Lizzie played it cool and was actually viewed as a victim and someone who was fortunate to have survived the brutality. She was embraced by the community which did not doubt her claims of innocence for one second. At the time there was no way that a woman could have been guilty of such a horrendous crime and Lizzie was from a respectable family, and respectable people don't commit crimes. Nice people don't use axes. Nice people never lie.

Lizzie was eventually tried because there was no other suspects to point the finger at. The case was so high profile for the day, that the public demanded a trial and they wanted it to clear Lizzie and uncover the real killer. It was not unlike the Scott Peterson Trial. It meant nothing to anyone that wasn't a friend or relative of those involved, but everyone in the world felt like they were invested in it.

The trial cleared Lizzie, but it never solved the puzzle and the people of the world were shocked! This was too juicy of a riddle not to have an answer. When you read a mystery novel, or watch a movie, you don't expect to walk away from it without a resolution. You expect to walk away with some answers. If you knew the novel was going to leave you with questions that didn't have answers, you wouldn't read it.

Lizzie got off because people could not and would not allow themselves to believe that one of their own could commit such an act. Lizzie got off because the town would rather live with the illusion of living in a utopian society than to admit that there was a flaw in their design.

The town fell apart after that. People who had once championed Lizzie and defended her, would no longer accept in her in social circles. Lizzie was the missing piece of the puzzle that no one wanted to put in place. Everyone knew she was guilty, but could not say it out loud. They could treat her like an outcast, but to admit her culpability in the matter would be acknowledging their own.

On any given day in the wonders of nature's backyard, you can walk through the world and be a witness to a secret, or a missing puzzle piece. Such as... Chicken sneezes. Do they sneeze? Is it something that they can do? Do chickens have a reason to sneeze? Do chickens have allergies?

On a regular day here in the forgotten mountains, I am sitting and stewing on the unexplained mystery of Lizzie Borden scandal and I am given the gift of witnessing a solution to a mystery that has been millennia in the making. Chickens... Sneeze. Yes, they do. Right in front of me! This mystery novel has finally been revised to include a resolution. The bad guy in the movie is killed in the final act. Lizzie Borden is found guilty. A town full of utopians finally sees that their social fabric is made of cheese cloth. I could care less about Lizzie's guilt! I have seen a chicken sneeze!

A chicken that was nearby almost said, "Excuse me". Caught up in the trivial nature of human behavior, I almost forgot about the most interesting mysteries that life has to offer. Not the weird ones that Time/Life makes books about, but the little ones that we overlook like, "do chickens sneeze".

Yes they do... and Lizzie killed her family.