Today's Prompt: A chicken (from Ennui Enigma).
"Lost chicken, if found please return."
"What do you make of that, eh, Watson?" Holmes asked with a gleam in his eyes as Watson read the indicated advertisement in the agony column.
"I don't know, Holmes," he answered with a smile. "It's chicken scratch to me, but clearly you glean something from it."
"Come now, Watson, if I didn't know you better I would say you were chicken," Holmes teased. "Would you pay your two pence to publish a line like this in the paper if it had no meaning?"
"It seems a rather inefficient way to advertise for a lost bird."
"As there is no return address, I would say inefficient is a vast overstatement," Holmes said with a chuckle. "What does that tell us?"
"The person who paid for it wasted their money. Unless it's intended as a joke, like a rubber chicken."
"It could be a joke," Holmes acknowledged, "But I am inclined to think it is more, if only for interest's sake. You are no spring chicken; you know the ways of the world. Why would someone post such an advertisement?"
Watson hesitated. "It would make a rather cryptic message. If the recipient was expecting it, it could mean anything. I am afraid any attempt to figure it out will wind up with us running around like chickens with their heads cut off."
Holmes nodded approvingly. "As a signal, it could be uncrackable. However, I suspect you give the sender a little more credit than he is owed. When the hens come home to roost, I expect our man will find something close enough to what he advertised for in his circumspect way."
"He shouldn't count his chickens before they hatch, whatever they may be, especially if he's resorting to such a peculiar means to find them."
"This does smack of a last resort, doesn't it, Watson? Some of his birds have flown the coop and so he's forced to call out to his feathered friends to find them."
"You don't suppose there's foul play?" Watson asked.
"If it isn't chickens, it's feathers," Holmes said with a shrug. "Probably just over chicken feed anyway."
"Maybe if we rise with the birds tomorrow we'll have a chance of seeing what it's all about."
"To do that we'd have to know quite a bit more than this paper alone can tell us. It's a chicken and egg question if I've ever heard one."
Watson let out a sigh. "It's probably a problem for the birds anyway."
"You're right," Holmes said. "Still, I don't think it was all a wild goose chase."
"Certainly not, if he's looking for a chicken."