OK so here goes. Friends have often said that my life has been so full of odd incidents and amusing anecdotes that I really ought to write them down. Otherwise they only come to mind when in context of another discussion, so can be forgotten until a conversation goes that way. Chicken cannons rarely come up in conversation, so had better get this one down now.
When travelling a few years back, people whom you met always hit you with the same stock questions. One of them was 'what do you do for a living?'. It helps them to judge you, pigeonhole you, if you like. It became tedious.
Travelling on a boat, to an island called Koh Chang, I resolved one day to convince the next person who asked me that question that I dealt in Chicken Cannons for a living. I told my travelling friend, but he was more interested in watching the island approach.
When we found our ideal beach, he introduced me to a few of his friends and as the evening drew on, we found ourselves sitting on cushions in front of a beach bar, drinking a concoction prepared in an ice-bucket - 'One Set'.
There was an irritating Canadian girl, 'Nagelbaum' was her name, who joined us. She was with a curly-haired, uninteresting, dumb bloke. Australian. As soon as she joined our mat, she wanted to know what we all did.
The divers dived. Steve (my friend) was a surveyor. I refused to tell her, saying that I didn't want to talk about it. She pressed a little and I said it was a little embarrassing, and she would only take the piss. I was here on holiday and didn't want to be justifying my career in front of a load of strangers on the beach. Subject changed (by me) and she was duly intrigued.
Only Steve knew what I was up to, and I caught a knowing glance as I went into this. He said nothing and the conversation drifted on. Next subject was 'where are you heading next?' and 'how long are you travelling?'. I was non-committal on both, saying that I may go anywhere, and was expecting to be travelling for at least 6 more months (having been travelling for 3 at the time).
"But what about your job?"
"Oh, that's all right, it doesn't really matter how long I go. I might have to nip back to work for a week or so, but that's it."
More intrigue... what type of work did I do that allowed me so much time so far from work?
"OK," I fessed up "I'm a saleman, but I only sell big items, so only shift 1 or 2 per year."
She said that being a salesman was not embarrassing, so why such reticence? Again I said I'd really rather not talk about it, in fact it was already becoming an issue, and I did not want everybody on the beach taking the piss, and why was all the attention on me, IF YOU DON'T MIND.
Hooked: "what do you sell?"
"I am NOT telling you."
"Why not?" etc etc
Steve was rolling his eyes, and the rest of his mates (uninformed) were now becoming curious. Eventually I agreed to tell her, on condition that she did not take the piss. She readily agreed.
"I deal in a ballistic product. A type of cannon. That fires chickens."
Hysterical laughter. I became really offended and shouted at her "You see! That's why I don't want to fucking talk about it!"
"What is the point of that?"
"Well it saved your life."
"How?"
"How did you get here?"
"By boat."
"Not to the island you berk, to the country."
"I flew."
"Precisely."
Then the spiel really started. I had a good friend called Ed Prelock in LA. He was a Director of Disney (Walt nicknamed him 'Mouse' and staff called him 'Mr Mouse'), a lovely man and deserved a part in this blag.
I said that I worked for a company called Maus Prelock, Mauser being a German weapons manufacturer bought out by American Prelock Engineering after the war to create Maus Prelock Ballistics.
We manufactured a cannon which fired chickens at jet aircraft engines to test them for safety. After all, you cannot fly a plane into a mountain as one crash-tests a car (and the result would be pretty fucking obvious), nor can you fly around looking for a large bird to fly into. Leave the plane on the ground and fire birds at it to test its strength. Bird strikes are very common on runways, and geese fly very high. A chicken was therefore designated as the standard unit to test aircraft fuselage and engines, fired at a speed to simulate real flying situations. Chickens are the same constituency blood, bones, flesh and similar in size and weight to a high flying bird - why send money creating a dummy? They are also easily available and cheap to buy from any supermarket, farm, butcher etc around the world. Standard.
The chicken is loaded into a wooden case or 'sabot' to ensure a perfectly circular seal. Chickens are not all the same shape, so it enables uniform pressure. The canon is charged with propellant gas (same as hairspray), the higher the pressure, the higher the muzzle velocity. On leaving the barrel, the sabot springs apart, and the chicken continues. Think of 500mph cruising speed + 35mph goose flying gives an impact velocity of 535mph. Load it to 600mph and you can test a jetliner. Different aircraft have different cruising speeds, so use more or less propellant pressure accordingly. By the way a sabot was a French wooden clog, work by mill workers. When dissatisfied, they were known to throw them into the workings of the machinery and bring the mill to a halt. Hence the word 'Sabot-age'.
By now all the people sitting around on the mat were completely enthralled. Steve, to his credit kept very quiet and stared out towards the sea, only agreeing when asked by one of his friends if this were true. The technical explanation did seal the deal though, as it was delivered very matter-of-factly, by a person who really did not want to talk about it.
Phrases such as 'it may sound ridiculous, but somebody has to do it' and 'that's the thing with you people, you don't think about shit like this when sitting in an aircraft, but do when you buy a car' also helped.
"How much to they cost?"
"Quarter of a million. I make 10% commission, so only need to sell 1 or 2 a year. Usually through an airshow, but there's maintenance contracts, and recalibrating when a new aircraft is developed" etc etc bullshit bullshit.
Nagelbaum loved it. She tried to keep a straight face, but truly could not believe what she had stumbled upon, giggling until I would shoot her a tired look, and occasionally collapsing into fits of hysteria until I would get offended and she would apologise. Again and again.
One of the divers, a sharp, retired New York broker called Douggie (who became one of my closest friends), went to the toilet. he'd obviously had a think about it, as when he returned he leaned forward an hissed the words 'You bitch!' out of the corner of his mouth. I smirked and winked at him. He was now in on the deal, and as he could corral the rest of the dive team, I decided to raise the ante with his tacit approval. Douggie had heard of this job, just never met anyone who did it etc etc. Now I was legitimately firing chickens out of cannons. It was the first time he'd met me, and he was loving it.
So I hit them with an amusing work-related anecdote, actively encouraged by Douggie, with the rest of the divers in astonished awe.
In Britain, they produced a high-speed train prototype, good for 150mph. Regular trains did 80 at the time. Trains routinely run over badgers, foxes and dogs. Crows and magpies will them eat the carrion; an approaching train will scare them off. However, with the new trains travelling at 150mph, they might not make it and it would be possible for one to collide with the windshield having flown up to that height as the train approaches. 150mph+35 gives impact velocity of 185mph. Can we test their windshields? Sure we can... we do the Japanese Shinkansen (bullet train) which uses 3 layers of polycarbonate (same as a fighter jet canopy) sandwiched with a clear resin to provide elasticity (you've got to have the background facts to hand).
So we arranged a short-term lease on a machine that we used for demonstrations at air shows, took it down and set it up. Showed them how to turn the pressure down to get a muzzle velocity of 200mph, and said to get standard chickens from Tesco.
After a few days, we received a call. There was a problem and could we come over and take a look. The chicken had devastated the front of the train. Gone straight through the front windshield, destroyed half of the console, smashed the back off the driver's seat, and left a 4-inch dent in the metal rear of the driver's compartment. Had they fired it too fast?
2 engineers went to watch them carry out the experiment again, with the same result. they came back and issued a report, stating that the next time they carried out the experiment, we recommended that they defrosted the chickens before placing them in the cannon.
Complete bullshit - an urban myth I had read somewhere on the internet. But fucking hell, it had them all going. Douggie was crying, and Steve had been completely unaware of this side to the blag. This was 10 years or so ago, so that particular urban myth is too well known to chance again, but it had a good airing.
After Nagelbaum went to bed, I told the rest of the crew that the whole thing was total bollocks. They admitted having been completely taken in by it, so though I say so myself, I had done very well. We didn't tell her though.
She told everybody on the beach, and for the next few days, whenever I saw her, she would shout "Ha ha! Chicken Man!", flap her arms and cluck like a chicken.
And she thought that SHE was taking the piss.
When we lived on the beach, our set beach phrase was 'the devil finds work for idle hands' as we were always looking for some form of mischief to entertain ourselves, often at the gentle expense of 1 or 2 week holidaymakers. There's a lot more where that came from.
By the way, you can google 'chicken gun' - they do exist.
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