Sticker Meme Encyclopedia: Chicken Whisperer
There’s a Sticker in the 10 Year Birthday Stickers that shows Dr. Romanov playing a flute with chickens gathered around him on both sides. What exactly is it trying to say?
The tower in the background of this sticker, the B site, and the architectural details all point to Inferno. Inferno, chickens, and a flute—those are the building blocks of a fairy-tale concept, specifically The Pied Piper of Hamelin, drawn from the Grimm fairy tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Some of you may not know this story, so let me quickly run through the basic plot. In the fairy tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a town is plagued by a swarm of rats, and the piper appears and agrees to solve the problem. He plays a magical pipe and leads the rats away. But the townspeople refuse to pay him. So the piper plays his pipe again, this time luring the children into following him. In the end, he takes all the children away, and only one child is left behind in the town because a disability kept them from catching up with the group.
Pied Piper
The sticker’s original name is “Chicken Whisperer.” Taken literally, that would be something like “one who speaks to chickens.” In-game, the player is basically like the Pied Piper from the story: if you press “E” on a chicken, it will keep following you until it dies. Once you’ve gathered a whole flock of chickens, it really does look like the Pied Piper from the fairy tale.
And after the update, the chicken animations that had previously been sitting in the game files were finally added. Their chubby little run looks even smoother and rounder now. Once you adopt them, they’ll keep following you around, and when you stop, they’ll lie down beside you. Even though they’re scared of gunfire, they’re still willing to stay by your side.
When they get killed, the game automatically shows a message telling players how long they spent with the chicken. Very few messages in this game are shown in red text.
So the artist, Miguli, took inspiration from the chickens that follow players around: when a chicken gets burned, it turns into roast chicken. From there, the idea seems to connect to the look of a certain chicken-themed fast-food chain mascot (Colonel Sanders), so Dr. Romanov was chosen as part of the sticker design. (After all, Dr. Romanov looks a lot like Colonel Sanders! That is also part of why the Chinese localization renders it as “Chicken Whisperer.”)
This sticker has a scrape easter egg: once you scrape it down far enough, the background and the chickens disappear, leaving Dr. Romanov all by himself.
Unlike the wear reference image, this sticker ultimately went with an effect that keeps the character’s full color intact.
Do you like these round little animals in the game?
Related Skins:
https://buff.market/market/goods/cs2/Sticker%20%7C%20Chicken%20Whisperer