Strange Runic Chicken Tracks

Delaware: A few days after New Years, Gus Braedecker of Coffins Grove replaced ten of the forty chickens that had mysteriously burst into balls of flame back on October 6 (see: Spontaneous Chicken Combustion?, October, 1997, Vol. 4, Issue #10). On February 13, at 6 PM, he went to feed his birds and discovered them acting strangely.

     "They were squawking and flappin' around the new chicken house something terrible. Now I knew they weren't really settled in yet an' all, but this was very unusual. As soon as I got the door open to the house, they all crowded around my feet and tried wrigglin' out. I thought something had tried to get in the house, like a dog or a coyote and that it took off when it heard me coming. So I let them out, figurin' they come back in as soon as they got cold---there was some snow in the yard---chickens don't really like snow much."

     While the chickens were outside in the snowy yard, Braedecker thoroughly investigated the chicken house to discover what had so disturbed his new hens. After finding no trace or track of any animal inside or outside the roost, he decided to shoo the chickens back inside.

     "That's when I noticed what they were doin' in the snow," Baedecker explains. "They looked like real strange marks until I remembered that I saw ones like it on your magazine cover."

     Baedecker alertly retrieved a camera from his house only to behold his chickens even more agitated, running furiously about the yard, destroying the bizarre marks. He had just begun photographing what remained of the miraculous tracks when the sudden odor of burning feathers caught his attention. He looked up just in time to witness all ten new chickens rushing about the snowy yard in flames.

     "It was just like what happened back in October! A couple of 'em just exploded as they were running. Little muffled thumps. If it weren't so weird, it'd be damn near funny."

     Braedecker's photos of three partially intact inscriptions, meantime, have been studied by Third Eye's own distinguished paleographer. He has positively identified them as Norse runes commonly used in the 9th century and has translated them.

     Given the reputation for eldritch, bloody legacies and hauntings in Coffins Grove, the short runic message becomes all the more dire: "Save us."