It’s hard to know exactly when the phantom chicken vibrations began. Perhaps it was on a Monday during a particularly low air pressure system. In any event, they have only grown stronger…

When I was a Wilderness Ranger in Wyoming, I would travel through “the largest road-less area in the lower 48 states” for 10 days at a time. Although I had brushes with raging rivers, grizzlies, and poachers, I didn’t have a radio or a cell phone. They were worthless. And I loved it.

Teaching skiing in the 90s I guided clients and students down some of the most amazing ski runs in North America. Sometimes we found waist deep powder, steep tree runs, chutes, cliffs, and all kinds of snowy challenges. And I didn’t carry a cell phone. Fantastic.

When cell phones became fairly popular I poo poohed them. They were unnecessary. My ski clients almost universally carry them; friends and family live with them; and it’s almost assumed that you DO have a cell phone.

“What’s your cell number?” they ask as they hold up their phone, ready to add me to their address book.

“What makes you think I have a cell number?” I sometimes reply. They usually don’t know what to say.

Now my summer job requires me to carry a company cell phone. I’m a heavy equipment operator for a prestigious excavation company in the Aspen area. Which leads me to the phantom chicken vibrations.

As an equipment operator, it’s difficult to hear a phone ringing over the din of the machinery, the construction site, earplugs, and a radio set on volume number “30”. So a wise coworker helped me set my cell phone to “vibrate”.

Scrolling down the preset ring tones, I picked out a rooster crowing. Boy, is that rooster crowing popular with the temp laborers. When I go into the temp agency to pick up some help for the day, sometimes the phone goes off on maximum volume. There I am, standing in my black Carhartt pants with a rooster crowing loudly. 30 or 40 guys from not the US are all staring at me, smiling. I look at them and say “Wake up! It’s time to go to work!”

Elvin began to call my cell phone “Cheekin Leedle” and the name stuck with the other workers.

Now, whenever someone calls me, the phone vibrates against my right thigh muscle (the phone slides neatly into my Carhartt leg tool pouch) and crows. This brings me to the medical problem known as phantom chicken vibrations.

Sometimes, I go to answer the phone, only to find that there is no one there. I’m sure that I felt the phone vibrate over the bouncing of the machine. And didn’t I hear the rooster crowing? Maybe that was just a soundbite of Hillary Clinton on the radio. Similar pitch and tone.

Now I feel phantom chicken vibrations while driving my car, shopping for cheap milk, and laying in bed. Are they real? Am I just paranoid that I’ll miss a call? Who knows.

I know of a guy who was a professional trucker his entire life. His wife once told me that he used to shift gears in his sleep. Maybe I’m in good company. I’m just glad that I don’t throw knives for a living.