Imagine waking up one morning to find pink colored chickens happily pecking away at the grass along a riverbank in your neighborhood.
That's what a lot of folks in Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon saw just the other day. Some smiled, some were shocked and all wondered where on Earth these pink chickens came from.
And whoever heard of pink chickens?
Someone called the Multnomah County Animal Services to report the pink chickens. Animal Services picked-up the birds at the city's waterfront park and that's when the mystery of these colorful chickens was solved.
It turns out these chickens -- there were only two of them --were dyed pink by their owner who said he wanted to make people smile.
And a lot of these Oregonians probably did smile at the strange sight.
The chickens' owner, Bruce Whitman of Portland, said the success of his happiness experiment exceeded his wildest dreams.
"I didn't expect to get this many people to smile", he said.
"I love making someone else smile because it'll make me smile," Whitman said. "This came back tenfold."
The pink chickens drew thousands of comments and likes on Animal Services' Facebook page, reported Oregonlive.com.
Whitman, a bartender, said he used food coloring, beet juice and Kool-Aid to dye the two birds a bright pink.
Whitman paid $32 to get his birds back from animal services, the standard impound fee. He said an animal control officer warned him about the dangers of releasing birds in public places.
The chickens have no names. Whitman said he's considering a naming contest on his Facebook page.
And because of the happy ending to this happy episode, who's to say it won't be repeated sometime, somewhere?
Who wants to smile? Anyone?