When The Light Comes On The Chicken Dances

It's hard to get solid information when it comes to a dancing chicken. Harder still when it comes to a piano-playing chicken.

When I vacationed throughout the south with my parents as a small child I saw numerous fair exhibits involving animals in small cages where, if you put a quarter in the slot, the animal would perform a tiny vaudeville act just for you. Put a quarter in the box, and a squirrel suddenly shoots out of a box overhead and rides a tiny bicycle on a tightrope stretching from one end of the tent to the other and back again. But my favorite was the piano-playing chicken. You'd put a quarter in the slot, a light bulb would come on and the chicken would hop up on a toy piano and dance across the keyboard, playing a random cacophonous non-tune with its feet. The only Google results I've seen show pictures of chickens pecking at the keys with their beaks; the explanation being that if the chicken hits the right keys in the right sequence a handful of chicken feed will come cascading out of the piano at the finish.

These explanations are far more humane than what I remembered. My dad explained that, when the light came on, the chicken had a few seconds to hop up on the piano before the floor became electrified. Same with the squirrel. It did it's thing or got the crap shocked out of it. They're probably doing the same thing with Justin Bieber.

But the title here is a Spookshow In Your Pants song, a slightly different version once known as 'Crashing'. Click on the above title to have a listen.