in my tax bracket - open, joining

[chicken]

'cold? pffft. this thick skin was built to see seals across antarctica,' chicken had asserted to a friendly chap who had pointed him in the direction of the nearest civilisation, apparently called 'snowbound'. the guy had warned him it was so cold in that direction that his 'nipples had fallen off', at first the tiger had scoffed, but now chicken was a little concerned he was going to lose his nipples to hypothermia too. which was a shame, because he was rather fond of them.

this territory had definitely crossed the line of 'cold' to 'too cold', as when the tiger just wanted to take a fucking piss behind one of the pine trees, his piss had frozen as soon as it had been expelled from his body. chicken's eyes had just widened before he waddled forwards. just when chicken was about to start listing everything he hated about the tundra out loud or either succumb to the cold and let the pine trees feed on his decomposing corpse (he couldn't decide which), chicken was sure he spotted some form of smoke expelling from a gap in the trees. he didn't know whether this was some strange ice-desert like mirage that his stupid brain had conjured up, as he was beginning to lose any hope of seeing any intelligent life.

just when he was sure he was about to start hallucinating palm trees instead of pine trees, a wooden cabin appeared in his sight. "what the hell?" chicken spat out, sounding as if he was a little offended. "damn, they live like this?" drawing his tail over his side as if he was trying to comfort himself, convince himself that this wasn't the godforsaken place he would be forced to stay until he could bear the journey back to warmer places. wailing to himself like a sulking puppy, batterychicken bared his teeth and sank his ass into the snow behind him.