By now, the scene outside Anke’s house could probably only be described as advanced village madness.
At least thirty people were gathered in front of the picket fence.
Two police cars blocked the narrow access road while completely overwhelmed officers tried to keep curious villagers, reporters, and a small tour bus full of sightseers apart.
In the middle of all this chaos stood Anke Lorenz, still unwashed and wearing her flowered bathrobe in front of her own house, beginning to seriously wonder whether she had secretly died and this was some particularly badly organized version of hell.
Someone was holding up a sign that read:
WE ARE ALL GERTRUD
Nearby, a group of teenagers were loudly debating patriarchal structures in the poultry world with Petersen.
They were led by a thin woman dressed entirely in black.
Her short hair was severely combed back, and her narrow, tense face resembled that of a bad-tempered German teacher shortly before retirement.
“THE ROOSTER IS THE PROBLEM!” she shouted.
Immediately, the teenagers began chanting rhythmically.
“FASCIST ROOSTER! FASCIST ROOSTER!”
Herbert responded with a burst of crowing so loud that even the seagulls fell silent for a moment.
“You see!” the woman shouted triumphantly. “Aggressive dominance behavior!”
Anke closed her eyes for a moment.
Yesterday, she had still been peacefully drinking coffee.
Today, her rooster was being publicly denounced as a fascist.
Pastor Böhm from the village’s Protestant Church of the Holy Virgin had also appeared. The short, round man held both hands soothingly in front of his stomach and spoke to Gertrud in a concerned voice.
“We should pray for her.”
He looked seriously at Anke.
“And, of course, for you as well.”
Anke stared at him.
“Pastor… I don’t need prayers anymore. I need booze.”
Right beside the garden gate, Käthe Kruse had meanwhile set up a small camping table.
A neatly handwritten cardboard sign read:
COFFEE €2 – COOKIE €3
Anke picked up a cookie and stared back and forth between the sign and the plate in disbelief.
“Why is the cookie more expensive than the coffee?”
Käthe stared at her as though Anke had just asked why fish were wet.
“Cookies are baked with eggs. So either three euros or no cookie.”
She practically snatched the little biscuit from Anke’s hand and put it back on the plate.
Anke stared silently at the cookies for several seconds.
Apparently, you couldn’t even be poor in peace anymore.
The District Administrator’s car came racing around the corner with screeching tires.
Friedrich Thomsen practically jumped out before it had finished braking.
Directly behind him, Achim Blöcker stumbled out of the car and nearly dropped his briefcase.
McDoven, on the other hand, climbed out with the same composure as a man arriving at a rose exhibition.
At the same time, the presenter from Hot Spot News pulled young Bertels aside.
“You wanted to comment on the current situation?”
Bertels nodded and adjusted his rimless glasses.
This was exactly the moment he had been waiting for.
“This crisis could have been prevented!” he declared, gesturing wildly toward the camera. “Lüttmoorsiel urgently needs more tourism! More investment! Modern infrastructure!”
Mayor Clausen heard his political rival’s words as he got out of the car and immediately turned dark red.
“What on earth does that have to do with the chickens?”
“EVERYTHING!” Bertels shouted back. “Stagnation always leads to problems!”
By now, Anke had simply sat down on her wooden bench and was silently watching her front garden fall apart.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, the most dramatic thing likely to happen there was Petersen standing around complaining about the weather.
Now politicians, journalists, and half a revolutionary movement were debating her chickens.
Meanwhile, Thomsen ignored the shouting and marched straight toward the coop.
“The enclosure is too small,” he suddenly announced with statesmanlike authority.
Everyone immediately fell silent.
Even Herbert briefly stopped crowing.
Thomsen nodded decisively.
“Of course. The birds feel confined.”
Before anyone could react, the District Administrator climbed over the garden fence and opened the little coop door himself.
Absolute silence.
Everyone stared expectantly at the chickens.
Roswitha briefly looked up.
Sissi pecked idly at the straw.
Gertrud blinked once.
Not a single chicken moved so much as an inch toward freedom.
Anke stared silently into the enclosure for a moment.
Then she slowly stood up.
“No,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Nobody can get through this sober.”
Ignoring everyone else, she went back into the house, opened the small display cabinet beside the living room cupboard, and reached for the bottle of eggnog Mrs. Lieblich had given her for her last birthday.
Between some old glasses, a dusty porcelain duck, and a faded photograph of her late husband, the bottle suddenly seemed like the most sensible decision anyone had made all day.
When Anke returned outside, Thomsen was still standing helplessly beside the open coop door.
The chickens appeared to have no interest whatsoever in their newfound freedom.
“Well,” Anke said dryly. “Looks like the revolution’s been canceled.”
Blöcker hurried over to the cameraman.
“Don’t film the chickens,” he whispered frantically. “The District Administrator is standing there.”
Reluctantly, the cameraman swung the camera away.
Organic butcher Holger Grünwald sat down beside Anke on the bench.
“I could take Gertrud,” he said cautiously. “Then you’d be rid of the problem.”
Anke slowly turned her head toward him.
“Excuse me?”
Holger raised both hands soothingly.
“Purely theoretical. Four chickens. Four eggs. The world would be back in balance. And your Gertrud would make an excellent soup chicken.”
Anke stared at him.
For a long time.
A very long time.
“Holger,” she finally said calmly, “if you so much as look at Gertrud the wrong way, you’ll end up on your own butcher’s block.”
Holger nodded immediately.
“It was just a thought.”
Suddenly, the presenter began frantically pressing a hand to her earpiece.
“What?”
Her eyes widened.
“An emergency debate in the Bundestag?”
Everyone fell silent.
They all stared at her.
“Berlin is now debating the egg crisis,” the presenter said in disbelief. “We have to leave immediately! We’re going to Berlin.”
As if on command, chaos erupted again.
Camera crews raced toward the satellite truck.
The teenagers continued shouting:
“FREEDOM FOR GERTRUD!”
Pastor Böhm tried to hand someone a prayer booklet.
Thomsen yelled at the police officers.
“Clear the road! Nobody can get through here!”
A few minutes later, suddenly, it was all over.
They were simply gone.
The satellite truck sped away, followed by the District Administrator’s car and the minibus.
The police disappeared.
The teenagers marched off toward the village square.
Even Pastor Böhm suddenly moved with remarkable speed toward the village center, presumably hoping to reach a television set before the Bundestag debate began.
Käthe Kruse, however, simply abandoned her little sales table.
“Berlin needs a clear message now!” she shouted resolutely, marching after the procession with a bright red face. “I’m going there to protest!”
The table, complete with coffee, cookies, and a half-toppled thermos, remained abandoned beside the garden gate.
Anke was still sitting motionless on her wooden bench, staring after the slowly departing procession.
People carrying signs.
Camera crews.
Teenagers.
Politicians.
Somewhere, someone was still waving a German flag.
It looked like the completely disastrous carnival parade of a nation on the verge of collapse.
Only when the last voices had faded away did Anke realize how quiet everything had suddenly become.
All that remained were a few crushed drink cans, an abandoned protest sign reading ALIENS ARE TO BLAME, and the smell of warm asphalt, coffee, and complete mental exhaustion.
The sudden silence almost frightened Anke more than the noise had.
Beyond the dike, the evening sun slowly began to sink, bathing the sky and sea in warm shades of gold and orange.
Seagulls drifted lazily on the wind.
Somewhere, a fishing boat chugged steadily back toward the harbor.
Anke fetched the plate of cookies and stared at it.
What remained of the day:
A plate of cookies and a bottle of eggnog.
She sat down on her wooden bench and silently ate Käthe’s outrageously overpriced baked goods.
Yesterday at this time, all she had wanted was peace and quiet.
Now, presumably, the whole of Germany was discussing her chickens.
Without a word, she took another cookie from the plate.
Three euros each.
At least it tasted properly of butter.
Sighing, she got up, went into the house—and stopped dead after two steps.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Three of the chickens had apparently decided to take over the house.
Roswitha was standing in the middle of the kitchen table.
Sissi was curiously pecking at the edge of the carpet.
Erna had made herself comfortable in front of the television.
Only Gertrud and Bärbel were still wandering around outside in the enclosure.
Herbert, meanwhile, was enthroned in the middle of Anke’s bed like a proud emperor moments before addressing his people.
Anke stared at him for a long time.
Herbert stared back.
Then she simply sat down on the sofa with her eggnog and cookies and switched on the television.
A few seconds later, she nearly choked.
The Federal Chancellor was actually standing at a lectern.
“This cannot continue, ladies and gentlemen,” he said gravely. “We cannot simply allow chickens to do whatever they want. Egg production in Germany is important to our citizens and to this country. We cannot afford another economic crisis. It starts with eggs and perhaps ends with carrots. Where will it all lead?”
Anke stared open-mouthed at the screen.
A cookie crumb landed on her bathrobe.
“We cannot and must not allow this,” the Chancellor continued emphatically.
Another politician immediately appeared on screen.
“What you are saying, Chancellor, quite frankly leaves me speechless. Every chicken has the right to decide for itself whether or not it wishes to lay eggs. Just as every rooster has the right to decide whether or not it wishes to mate with a hen.”
Herbert crowed approvingly from the bed.
Anke briefly closed her eyes, took a deep gulp of eggnog, and put the glass back down.
“How much longer are we going to close our eyes—”
“Oh, would you all just shut up,” Anke muttered wearily and switched off the television.
With the bottle of eggnog in one hand and the plate of remaining cookies in the other, Anke slowly went back outside and sat down once more on her wooden bench.
The last warm light of the day now hung over the North Sea when her garden gate creaked open.
McDoven appeared carrying two glasses and sat down beside her without a word.
Anke silently passed him the bottle of eggnog.
“Remarkable,” McDoven said after a while, looking out toward the sea. “How quickly people can collectively lose their minds.”
Anke took another cookie from the plate.
“Over four eggs.”
McDoven was silent for a moment.
“No,” he finally said calmly.
“Over the fear that tomorrow there might only be three.”
Somewhere beyond the dike, a seagull screeched.
And from inside the chicken coop came a quiet…
plop.