guppy_sandhu

"Interview commenced at twelve-thirty PM. Sergeant Mannings interviewing; can you please confirm your name into the microphone?"

"Dr Gurpreet Sandhu"

"Right. Now, let’s go through this again. What exactly were you doing?"

"My neice put a chicken egg that I bought from the supermarket in a home-made incubator to try to hatch it. When it did, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I was trying to put the chick with the others at the farm, so that it would be looked after properly. It was busy and I didn’t want to put it in the coop with everyone watching because…"

The policeman looks over with increasing disbelief and stifled amusement.

"Because what?"

"Because I didn’t want to look like a complete idiot."

Sergeant Mannings now had to use great self-restraint not to laugh.

"Look here, this is the first ever case of chicken theft I’ve had to deal with. You’re saying that you already had a chicken in your bag before you went to the farm?"

"Yes. It squawked as I came out of the barn and the farm hand got the wrong idea."

At this point there is a knock at the door.

"Come in."

A scruffy man enters with an officer.

"Excuse me, sir. This man says he has vital information on the chicken robbery."

Sergeant Mannings raises an eyebrow. "Oh yes?"

"We made a mistake, sir. We counted the chickens after putting the little one he had in and found there was one extra."

The sergeant puts his head in his hands. This has to be the stupidest case he has seen in weeks.

"Would you please tell me why you didn’t count the chicks before you called the police?"

The man looks shifty.

"Well we didn’t think of it until he protested his innocence so strongly. It was only after he was arrested that we thought it might be a good idea."

"Interview terminated."

The Sergeant switches off the tape recorder and greatly restrains himself from either laughing of hitting his head repeatedly against the desk.

"Is that it then? You’re dropping the charges?"

"Yes."

"Dr Sandhu, you are free to go. You are also entitled to go and collect your chicken if you so desire."

Guppy gets up. "Please, would the farm just keep it? I’ve got nowhere to put it."

"I don’t care. Just get out of my police station all of you before I have you fined for wasting police time. Unless of course you've reconsidered those charges against your father."

Guppy shakes his head. "No, I'm still dropping the charges."

Sergeant Mannings shrugs. He's not going to push it. It's just extra work.