KFC--KUWAITI FRIED CHICKEN:

Poison-detecting poultry fried by Kuwait's sand, heat (GORDON DILLOW, 3/15/03, The Orange County Register)

"Alpha Annie" didn't survive her deployment to the Kuwaiti desert with the U.S. Marines. But at least it wasn't NBC that killed her.

Alpha Annie was a chicken, one of the now famous Kuwaiti chickens that were purchased by some Marine ground combat units here to help provide a backup for the high-tech nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) detectors each Marine company is equipped with. It was sort of a modern-day canary-in-the-mine-shaft concept.

Unfortunately, the chicken experiment didn't work. The wind and sand and dust in the barren Kuwaiti desert apparently is even harder on chickens than it is on Marines, because all of the sentinel chickens quickly died of natural causes. Sadly, Alpha Co.'s chicken was among them.

"Alpha Annie lasted the longest of any of them," reports Lt. Nathan Shull, the XO (executive officer) of Alpha Company, part of the 1st Marine Division based at Camp Pendleton. "I got to pick out our chicken and I picked the best one, and we kept her in the (sleeping) tent most of the time. But after five or six days she croaked in her sleep. I guess all the dust clogs up their sinuses or something."

The rapid disappearance of the NBC chickens gave rise to a persistent rumor.

"That's what they've been feeding us in the chow tent," says Sgt. James Hepburn, 25, who lives in Orange when he's not eating sand in Kuwait. In fact, Alpha Annie was buried in the desert with appropriate military honors.

Uh oh, PETA's gonna be mad...again. You can hear them now: "First they came for the polutry, but I wasn't a chicken...." Posted by Orrin Judd at March 15, 2003 4:45 PM