When Dinner Takes Flight: The Hilarious Case of the Seventeen-Story Flying Chicken
There are a few things you expect to encounter while working night security at a beachfront condo: late-night check-ins, maybe a rowdy pool party, or the occasional lost tourist. What you likely don’t anticipate is a rotisserie chicken falling from the heavens and crash-landing on your windshield in the dead of night. Yet, for one unsuspecting security guard, this poultry projectile was just the beginning of a story that would soon have the entire staff—and Reddit—clucking with laughter.
It’s a tale that has everything: drama, physics, community pranks, and a baked bird that defied gravity (and dinner plans). Let’s peel back the foil on “The Case of the Flying Chicken,” the internet’s latest legendary front desk saga.
Dinner, Interrupted: When Poultry Meets Physics
It was 9:30 PM, and our hero—a night security guard who doubles as the de facto front desk—was simply trying to enjoy his dinner in peace before closing the pool. Suddenly, BOOM! His windshield “explodes,” as he describes, launching both glass shards and his composure into the stratosphere.
After the heart rate dropped below hummingbird levels, inspection revealed the unlikely culprit: the mangled remains of a baked chicken, its brief but high-velocity flight over. Enter a frazzled woman and her unamused husband, sprinting (well, one was sprinting, the other trudging) to the scene of the culinary crime. The backstory? An argument on the 17th floor, a dramatic act of defiance, and a dinner sent flying off the balcony—a literal case of “takeout.”
As the original poster (u/onepumpchump396) recounted, the couple quickly handed over a wad of cash—enough for the windshield, a tow, a bottle of rum, and a steakhouse dinner for him and his now-wife. “At the time, I didn’t count the cash… but it paid for the windshield. The tow home, a nice bottle of rum and taking my now wife to a nice steakhouse for dinner,” he later clarified for curious commenters.
Angry Birds IRL: Community Reactions & Running Jokes
Redditors, of course, wasted no time unleashing their best puns, pop culture references, and poultry physics. The top-rated comment dubbed it “a Nakatomi Tower chicken,” channeling Die Hard, while others couldn’t resist a nod to the iconic WKRP Turkey Drop: “As God is my witness, I thought chickens could fly.” (For those not in the know, WKRP’s infamous Thanksgiving episode involved turkeys being dropped from a helicopter, with predictably disastrous results.)
Some folks even crunched the numbers. As u/The_1_Bob calculated, “The 17th floor… about 61 meters up. An average rotisserie chicken… 1.5 kgs. The chicken fell for about 3.69 seconds, impacted the windshield at 36 meters per second, and had an ending kinetic energy of 981 joules. This is about 6 times the energy of an MLB baseball.” In short: you really don’t want to be on the receiving end of a poultry projectile from that height—dead, cooked, or otherwise.
Longtime chicken owners chimed in too. “Most live chickens can fly. Dead chickens don’t fly well. Cooked chickens don’t fly, and frozen chickens don’t fly unless you shoot them out of a cannon into an airplane windshield,” quipped u/Misfitranchgoats, bringing some much-needed animal husbandry expertise to the thread.
And lest you think the drama ended with the windshield, the aftermath became the stuff of workplace legend. The next morning, condo employees pointed and gawked as the car was towed away, and the property manager reportedly giggled at the photographic evidence. For the next six months, OP’s desk was regularly booby-trapped with rubber chickens and business cards for glass shops—proof positive that in hospitality, a good joke has wings.
Lessons in Hospitality, Forgiveness, and Flying Food
While the tale is undoubtedly hilarious (in hindsight—OP admits “I hope you can laugh” about it now), it’s also a masterclass in customer service and quick thinking. The couple’s immediate apology and cash payment diffused what could have been a fowl situation (pun intended). As u/More_Paramedic3148 noted, “At least the guests were apologetic about the situation, and paid for their mistake rather than ignoring it… That must have been a rude awakening, windshields are so expensive.”
The story also sparked others to share their own tales of airborne objects and guest hijinks, from egged cars to purses flung off balconies. And yes, the debate raged on about whether Angry Birds should remain a smartphone game rather than a real-life condo sport.
More seriously, commenters did the math on just how dangerous this could have been. “This is like a Mythbusters problem,” observed u/Fenarchus, who estimated the chicken delivered “more than the amount of energy required to lift a ton.” It’s a funny story, but a sobering reminder that “you would have been dead if it had hit you directly.” OP agreed, referencing a tragic local incident involving a falling can.
The Lasting Legacy of the Low-Flying Chicken
Six months of rubber chicken pranks, water-cooler retellings, and a new “Don’t Feed the Birds (or Throw Them)” condo policy later, the incident remains a highlight in the annals of hospitality weirdness. As one Redditor put it, “You really seem to be a champ at that moment in how you took it. Good for you.”
Whether it’s rubber chickens in your desk or a once-in-a-career story to tell, sometimes the best you can do is laugh, take the cash, and make sure your insurance covers “acts of poultry.” Because in the world of hospitality, you never know what’s coming next—though you can be reasonably sure it won’t be a baked chicken from 17 stories up.
Have you ever had a dinner—or a day—go this sideways? Share your own tales of workplace weirdness below, and let’s keep the laughs (and the chickens) flying!
Original Reddit Post: The case of the flying chicken