chicken-slang?

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:42 AM -0500 11/1/05, Lois Nathan wrote:
>Hi all,
>      Could somebody enlighten me on the use of "chicken" in the following
>stanza from Arlo Guthrie's 1960s song "Coming into Los Angeles",
>which contains
>drug slang elsewhere.?   I've missed this one.
>
>      Comin' in from London over the Pole
>      Flyin' in a big airliner
>      Chicken flyin' everywhere around the plane
>      Could we ever feel much finer
>
>      Comin' into Los Angeles
>      Bringinn' in a couple a keys
>      Don't touch my bags if you please
>      Mister customs man
>
>      etc...
>
I know the song but never thought of "chicken" here as slang.  I
assume either the plane hit some air pockets and the chicken served
to the passengers (the unmarked meal aloft, in my experience) is
flying off their trays, or it hit a *big* air pocket and it's flying
out of...well, you get the picture.  The "coupla keys" is drug slang,
I'll grant you, but the chicken?  I don't think so, but I'm not
absotively posilutely certain.

Larry