Election 2012: My Chicken Is Running for Vice President

We need a new pecking order in America. It’s time to elect a chick to the White House. But this is not just any chick. This is Mae Poulet, top hen of Los Angeles, all-around feathered friend.    

Satchel, a dog in Tennessee, who has been running a campaign for president for the past year, has chosen my California chicken, Mae Poulet, to be his running mate. I got her from Craigslist in 2010. The ad read, “Free. Would make a good dinner.”Now she roams freely in my half-acre backyard with five other hens.

Chickens know how to cross the road—or the aisle—to bring all sides together, and studies show they are far more productive than politicians.

Mae has a Facebook page, and she is familiar with the public arena. In 2011, she helped with a Natalie Portman – Jason Alexander nonprofit campaign to raise money for poultry in need. 

There are two primary components to Mae’s political platform.

The first is protecting animals, an area in which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have a poor record. Romney strapped his dog to the top of his car and chose Paul Ryan, a hunter, for his ticket. Obama was graded a dismal C- by the Humane Society of the United States and broke a campaign promise to adopt a shelter dog if elected. Instead, he got a pure-bred pup from Ted Kennedy.     

Four million dogs and cats are killed in U.S. shelters each year at a staggering cost of $600 million. This is not only heart-breaking for the animals, but a fiscally irresponsible situation. Mae wants people to spay and neuter their animals and to stop buying from breeders and pet shops. She and Satchel support policies that protect both animals and people’s pocketbooks.

Secondly, Mae wants third party voices and third party candidates to be heard. Some studies show that 40% of the people in this nation identify as independents, yet Democrats and Republicans talk about “bi-partisan” rather than “non-partisan” solutions. The concerns of independents are rarely, if ever, addressed.  

“Not everyone is a donkey or elephant,’ Mae says. “Some of us are chickens or even people. The two parties have fowled things up miserably. It’s time for real change.”  

As for me, I never envisioned my chicken would be running for vice-president. She seemed so non-political when I adopted her.