Chickens have been on the rise as pets or at the very least resident egg layers after the great egg inflation of 2022. Chicken coops have popped up in suburban backyards across America with no expectation other than for them to cluck around and provide breakfast. They even make chicken outfits and tiny hands you can place over their wings.
Owning chickens has really become mainstream. But for one chicken mom there was a few minutes where she wasn’t quite sure what was happening with her feathered friends. Brianna Antionette uploaded a video to TikTok of what appears to be her chickens glitching…or being frozen by an alien forcefield about to beam them up. The entire situation was strange.
It was time for the chickens to eat and they were happily clicking along trying to get coordinated to follow the human leading them to food. Suddenly the chickens go quiet and stop mid stride. No movement whatsoever to include breathing from what it looks like.
The text overlay on the video reads, “have you ever seen a glitch in the matrix.” It really does look like a scene from a sci-fi movie the way all of the chickens freeze in unison. Some of the chickens still had their feet lifted as they froze mid stride and since chickens can’t talk the woman was left freaking out calling them to eat as they were completely unresponsive to her voice.
Some commenters offered a very reasonable explanation to all of her chickens suddenly playing freeze tag while others alternated between saying she faked it and being creeped out.
“Y’all they probably saw a hawk,” one person writes with a sobbing emoji.
“Chicken Tender here. They seen a threat and froze. When you said ‘where you going’ one alerted with a ‘growl’ tone telling others to stop moving.
@brianna_antionette What in the world happened to the chickensđ€Żđ”âđ«đ«š #viral #fyp
See, totally normal chicken stuff assuming “Chicken Tender” means one that tends to chickens and not the finger food. The logical answers didn’t stop others from speculating or freaking out, including Brianna. When responding to a comment that says, “you too damn calm for me. I wud[sic] have ran over there and shook one,” Brianna revealed her fear.
“LISTENN!! I thought the RAPTURE WAS ABOUT TO TAKE PLACE my mind was moving faster than my body,” she cries.
Thankfully for Brianna and her chickens, there was no rapture. There was no glitch in the matrix or aliens trying to beam them up and the chickens were not playing a cruel joke (people are giving tiny chicken brains too much credit). Nothing was wrong with her chickens, they were instinctively protecting themselves from a predator.
Hawks can easily carry away small animals so when animals are aware that they are prey for the large bird, they do what they can to minimize their risk. In this case, chickens know they can’t fly away nor can they out run the predator like a rabbit may be able to so instead they attempt to become invisible by freezing in place.