Some reporters—the good ones—know how to turn a chicken shit assignment into chicken salad. Or at least an excellent excuse to hang around a Native American casino, maybe play some slots or grab a nosh at the Festival Buffet. ("Featuring popular Italian, Asian, barbecue, and seafood dishes, as well as traditional comfort foods ..." Mmmm ... tradition.)

A freebie grab is the only rational explanation for the mini swarm of reporters covering Foxwoods's newest addition: A chicken that plays tic-tac-toe. (Fans of the New Yorker's Calvin Trillin already know all about these noble gladiatorial birds.)

The New York Daily News tries to ruffle some feathers with aTic-tac-toe bet: What are ya', chicken?:

The controversial Chinatown challenge of playing tic-tac-toe against a live chicken is back—but now you'll have travel to Connecticut to compete... The sport is new to Foxwoods, but a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken nested at the Chinatown Fair Arcade on Mott St. for years.

In 1998, outraged animal-rights activists convinced the arcade owner to hand over its last chicken and deliver her to a farm in Massachusetts.

Another newspaper, meanwhile, went for the old first-person chicken/human interest angle: "This chicken may look like a birdbrain, but it can (and will) kick your butt—at tic tac toe... It kicked mine."

Meanwhile, Kathleen Edgecomb, a reporter for Connecticut's the Day went for the highly ironic approach:

A chicken came to Foxwoods Wednesday to celebrate the opening of the casino's new El Pollo Loco flame-grilled Mexican chicken restaurant, and the bird, Ginger, was challenging everyone to a tic-tac-toe game.

But leave it to a local newsman, Andrew Pergam of Connecticut's NBC30, to make this story take flight by throwing himself in while throwing his dignity out. Pergam not only plays the chicken, he fake wrestles a person in a chicken suit, flirts with a showgirl, and eats his subject's cousin on camera.

Now that's what we call reporting.