I'm all for spoiling one's pets. God knows, Gypsy the Feline Dictator gets raw chicken and the expensive brand of dry food every day to eat, and her litter box is lined with the pricey flushable kind of litter.
Okay, so the litter is really for my benefit, not hers. I don't want to be running out to the rubbish bin with a vaguely odorous plastic baggie every time she goes in for a scratch around.
But still, I like to think that as far as owners go, I'm a good one! Hell, she even had her own couch up until the recent redecoration of my living room (and don't even get me started on the filthy looks I got for tossing it away). So I think I'm justified in saying that
Nieman Marcus have officially lost the plot if they think anyone is actually going to drop a hundred grand on a luxury chicken coop!
I know, right?
Call me crazy, but that seems a little exorbitant for something which could previously be made with some chicken wire and a couple of sheets of corrugated iron! I'm all for ensuring our feathered friends are well cared for and comfy in their homes, but it seems to me that if it's going to actually cost more than a reasonably priced kit home for a family of four, it's probably too much.
Assuming that the average chicken lays 350 eggs in its lifetime, and that a dozen eggs would set you back about $4 in a supermarket, the poultry palace would have to home 857 chickens before it would have paid for itself! And that's just to cover the cost of the coop, it doesn't take feed, time, vet costs, etc, into consideration.
Truth be told, I'm not even sure whether a chicken would want to live in that place. It was apparently modelled after Le Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette's house in Versailles. I can't help but think that the French of that era were a little too fond of chopping heads off for any self respecting chicken to feel completely comfortable in it.
By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!
