KFC 7-foot bucket appears in baffled Georgia woman's front yard

KFC 7-foot bucket mysteriously appeared in a Georgia woman's front yard last week. Unfortunately, the KFC 7-foot bucket contained no fried chicken.

A KFC Colonel (Robert Thompson) serves hungry fans as they attempt to set a world record for the largest ever single serving of fried chicken in 2010 in downtown Louisville, Ky. Another giant, vintage KFC 7-foot bucket showed up unannounced last week in a Georgia woman's front yard.

KFC/AP Images/File

July 31, 2013

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever had show up in your yard? For must of us, the answer is probably mysterious trash, or a rodent caught and proudly presented by the cat, or a motorcycle (speaking from experience).

But it’s doubtful any of us will ever have a better answer than Aleena Headrick, a Waynesboro, Ga. woman who spotted a 7-foot KFC chicken bucket sitting on her front lawn. The story was first reported by WAGT 26, NBC’s north Georgia affiliate.

“I know what you’re thinking. The answer is no. There is no chicken in that 7-foot bucket,” reporter Julie Meeks said in the TV piece.

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That devastating bit of information aside, here are the rest of the pertinent facts. Ms. Headrick was driving past her house last Thursday when she noticed the KFC bucket. “I thought for sure I was hallucinating, so I called my teenagers who were at home and had them go outside,” she told WAGT.

She posted a photo of it to her Facebook page and quipped that she would “bring chicken to the next potluck.”

So, where did the bucket come from? Was it a a prank? A KFC publicity stunt? An initial sign of contact from our giant, fried-chicken-loving alien overlords?

None of the above. It came from Headrick’s landlord Freddie Taylor, who collects vintage advertising memorabilia. He purchased it and didn’t know quite where to put it, so he dropped it off in the yard for the time being. He told WAGT that based on the signage, which spells out “Kentucky Fried Chicken” instead of just KFC, the bucket is probably about 40 years old.

What’s next for the bucket? Taylor plans to have it mounted on a pole as an area landmark, which Headrick doesn’t seem to mind. "We can just say, 'Come down to the giant KFC bucket and turn right,'" she told the station.

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KFC parent company Yum! Brands, meanwhile, plans to pay the Headrick family back for the free publicity with a free fried-chicken picnic.

“They’ve got the bucket, now they just need the chicken,” KFC spokesman Rick Maynard told the Huffington Post.