For the first forty years of his career, certain aspects of George Rodrigue's paintings remained predictable and consistent. No matter what the subject, whether Evangeline, the Blue Dog, the President of the United States, or a giant chicken, if the painting is an outdoor scene, then any subject is framed by a tree, illuminated from within, and part of a carefully planned puzzle, so that shifting any element destroys the design.

Scale is a key element for Rodrigue in both his paintings and in his life. If Rodrigue painted bunnies and chickens (and dogs) in a realistic scale, and showed them running around the base of a tree or sitting at a person’s feet, the mystery is gone; the subjects become ‘characters’ or, worse, lose their status as subjects altogether; and the paintings lose both their sincerity and their power.

Rodrigue's wife Wendy Rodrigue Magnus recalls when the artist showed her the stuffed chicken in a basket he purchased from a roadside taxidermist in South Louisiana:

“Isn’t it cool? I’m going to do a silkscreen!”