LAKE STEVENS – The Lake Stevens Chicken can’t fly.
But rumors certainly did this year before Friday’s homecoming football game, when the fiberglass fowl traditionally makes an appearance with the senior class.
Students at first thought they would have to pay rent to “steal” the chicken this year.
Not wanting to buy the farm, some seniors decided to replace the chicken with an oversized egg until they could make their own replacement chicken.
For his part, owner Dave Huber of Sedro-Woolley heard that seniors this year planned to blow up the bird.
In the end, the chicken came home to roost and the egg was scrambled. But next year could see a new pecking order; a second chicken is on the way.
Feathers were ruffled throughout the ordeal as other seniors squawked about their classmates’ egg idea and alumni made worried phone calls to administrators about a tradition that apparently flew the coop.
“I’ve learned that people are a lot more passionate about the chicken than we thought,” senior Jake Summers said after the dust had settled. “Our No. 1 goal throughout this whole thing was to help the tradition thrive.”
It is just the latest twist in local chicken lore.
The chicken first came to Lake Stevens in 1968, when Jean Kiniry took it from a drive-in she managed in Lynnwood and put it atop the local drive-in she had bought outside Frontier Village.
A year later, three seniors stole the fowl as a graduation prank, placing it on the roof of a teacher’s home.
Nearly every year since then, the chicken has similarly disappeared and reappeared in various locations – the gym roof, a water tower, suspended from a crane – before returning to its roost.
With the drive-in long closed, the chicken now is stored during summers at Huber’s farm in Sedro-Woolley and goes on tour during the school year. Students are allowed to have the chicken as long as they sign a paper saying they’ll take good care of it, Huber said.
Cheerleaders were the last to have the chicken for the Aquafest parade before parents secured it for Friday’s game, he said.
Seniors still plan to purchase a clone of the chicken as their gift to the school, Summers said. But instead of taking the place of the original chicken, the replica will likely be placed on campus as a statue with a plaque detailing the tradition’s history.
At Friday’s game, the original chicken once again strutted behind homecoming princesses. It’s just as well the egg did not accompany it – and not just for logistical reasons.
It’s actually a rooster.
At least we know which came first.
Reporter Melissa Slager: 425-339-3465 or mslager@heraldnet.com.
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