All Cooped Up
Summary: Some cases are for the birds.
A/N: Entry to this week's Unbound Improv Challenge. First and last lines are provided, with 1,000 words to write the middle.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I'm starting to think I need professional help. I still don't have anything to do with CSI, and I'm sure they are very happy about that.

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"That's something you don't see every day," Grissom noted. His face wrinkled as the intense acrid smell permeating the room made his eyes water. All day, a headache had plagued him; this case threatened to turn it into a full-blown migraine.

"Thank God," Sara muttered in disbelief, her eyes wide as she surveyed the carnage before them.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly, knowing this type of case had the potential to bother her.

Sara nodded, but even he could see the tightness in her posture and her disgusted look.

"What the hell happened here?" Catherine asked as she brought up the rear, jumping back when an angry chicken squawked at her as it fluttered from its perch on a bookcase. "You have to be shitting me."

They stood in the front room of a home located outside of the city. A truck loaded with chickens had driven into the house, knocking out a large segment of the wall. Rather than being an accident, the driver had proceeded to open all the cages and spread bags of feed throughout the house before disappearing.

"Owner was gone for four days. She came home to this," Sgt. O'Riley explained as he stepped gingerly through the muck covering the floors. From the damage – not to mention the smell – it was apparent that the hundreds of birds had been in there for most of that time.

"Who did she piss off? Colonel Sanders?" Catherine asked, irately shooing a curious chicken away with her foot.

"Funny you should ask. She's lodged a number of complaints against the poultry processing plant on the other side of the highway," O'Riley said, pointing through the gaping hole and grinning. "Which leads to the eternal question: Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"It wanted to be poultry in motion?" Catherine offered.

"That was fowl," Sara replied.

"This damn bird is foul. Why won't it leave me alone?" she asked, frowning as the determined chicken attacked her shoelace. She gave it a quick shove, but the bird hopped back angrily, then re-attacked, thinking it had found a giant worm.

"Must like your corny comments," O'Riley said dryly.

"Or it's giving you a worm reception," Sara added.

Grissom tried not to groan. "One of you making bad puns is too much. All of you – that's cruel."

"You know what they say," Catherine said, moving to examine the kitchen. Her newfound, winged admirer kept after her, pecking excitingly at her feet. "Birds of a feather flock together."

Closing his eyes against the pain, Grissom set his kit down and immediately wished he hadn't. Somewhere water had been left running. While it had kept the birds alive in the desert heat, the water had overflowed its container. The result left a mini-avian sewer flowing over the floorboards. Amazingly, the smell was worse than a full-sized human sewer.

Unfortunately, his kit and feet were in the middle of it. The pounding in his head picked up pace to match the squawking from the birds.

"Have you called Animal Control yet?" Sara asked, gently trying to herd a group of errant chickens away from what remained of the feedbags. As soon as she got one flock away, another took its place, eagerly scooping up the cracked corn. "We're losing all of our evidence."

"They said they'd get here as soon as they could. There's a grill out back if you get tired," the detective said, not backing down when Sara glared at him. "Hey, they were headed for the fryer before someone dumped them here."

Before she could give an indignant reply, a sudden commotion erupted from the hallway. All four of the humans turned curiously, watching as a chicken darted out, a dead mouse dangling from its mouth. Other chickens chased after it, loudly squawking as they tried to steal the tidbit.

"Chickens eat meat?" Sara asked, watching in horror as the lead chicken made a dash under the truck and headed to the highway, a trail of other birds flapping their wings in excited, avian envy.

"Hell, yeah," Catherine said, giving her a wink. "Why do you think that free-range, vegetarian-fed chicken costs so much? Somebody has to follow them around and pull out all the bugs they catch."

"I am so glad I'm a vegetarian."

Despite his own pounding headache, Grissom noticed Sara seemed upset. He knew she didn't like cases involving animal cruelty, although this appeared more a case of human cruelty; the smell would never come out of the house.

He hoped it would eventually come out of his shoes.

"Sara, go examine the truck," he directed, hoping that she'd appreciate his gesture.

Her broad grin was all the reward he needed. "Egg-cellent!"

Grissom did groan at that pun.

"What? I'm the one being attacked by chick-zilla," Catherine groused. She frowned as a flock lined up on the back of the couch, their beady, birdy eyes following her every movement. "Did I ever tell you how much I hated The Birds?"

"I don't think that's the crowd you should be telling," O'Riley said, watching as another group of chickens moved in to stare at Catherine.

"I'm really starting to feel like I'm in Dante's version of Chicken Run," Catherine murmured. Turning around, she saw Grissom pinching the bridge of his nose and asked if he was all right.

Before he could answer, Sara's call brought them all outside. She knelt by one of the truck's wheels, her flashlight illuminating the dead body hidden by the shrubbery. A bag of cracked corn lay over his head, which had landed on concrete edging around the flowerbed.

"Looks like he tripped over a chicken," Sara noted, pointing to a pile of feathers under his boot. "Real birdbrain."

Grissom leaned against the railing wearily. They had a house full of chickens that were not only eating their evidence, but also giving off a smell that could rival a decomposing body. Now they had a real decomp to deal with. Leaning closer, Grissom realized the man was wearing a guano-stained Elvis costume.

"Only in Vegas," he sighed.

The End