I wrote a short essay (of exactly 400 words) titled “The Chickens Will Kill You” for the October issue of COOP, a long-running zine devoted to chickens.

This pseudo-autobiographical essay is about my experience of playing Ocarina of Time at an early age and becoming afraid of the chickens after I heard a playground rumor that they’ll kill Link if he attacks them.

I should probably say that this is a complete fabrication. In real life, I read and memorized every page of the game’s official strategy guide, and I knew exactly what was going on with the chickens. Still, it’s a good story. Just as I write in the essay, you can’t prove a lot of what people said in the 1990s, but you can’t really disprove it either. That’s what made this sort of video game rumor so much fun, and perhaps it’s also an element of why the genre of analog horror works so well.

You can read and download a free digital copy of the issue of COOP with my essay here: https://coopzine.com/fowl-2026/