Lol!! I saved and then slaughtered a chicken, as soon as people started attacking me and the guards charged at me yelling "STOP CRIMINAL SCUM!!" (jk, I don't know what they say in this game) I just reloaded

Heh, I loved that when it happened to me.
I was also confused why I could not wield, until I remembered you can only surrender to guards.
Since I didn't see any guards in the small village I traveled to Whiterun (I think) and there I could pay a fine to the guards.
After that, everyone was all happy to see me again in the village

In Medieval times, homeless people occasionally slaughtered a cow or a chicken for food. It wasn't a crime punishable by death on sight.

Word. Killed a chicken too with my flamethrower spell, the entire town would eat my entrails for it

Try sheating your weapon. It is how you surrender/ yield.

Try staying away from the town for at least an in-game week and make sure you have no bounty on your head when you return.

Amen to that. That's also a nice funny mod idea right there. Hit a chicken too much, and suffer the retaliation of the voracious chicken horde !

I'd stab him in the face, repeatedly.

Luckily I was cautious and in a test told that wood-cutting Elf - after I helped him before - to help me as my companion and ordered him to kill the chicken. The whole bunch of peasants were excited and running around like crazy but nobody wanted to charge me. Looks like they have a strong buddhist codex while the "family" is more forgiving to its members than others... Haha! YOU MURDERERS!

Be even more careful of messing with the rabbits:

[media]http://youtu.be/XcxKIJTb3Hg[/media]

Lol, they shoulda just made it so that all the chickens go berserk on your ass, ala Zelda 64.

You can yield by putting your weapon away according to the game manual.

Epic Fail on dev.

wait a minute, so if i sneak up on the holy chicken in the middle of the night, when nobody is out but me, and i kill it, i still get a bounty? what happened to the whole you can kill people and as long as there are no witnesses or you kill the witnesses you have no bounty thing? i hated in oblivion i could sneak into a house at night and rob the place no prob, but if i snuck to the bed and murdered them the guards came even if nobody was in sight.
or is this only for chickens?

Serves you right!

I did the exact same thing, bounty of 40, only about 3 seconds later it said "The last witness was killed, bounty removed." xDDD

Working as intended

It depends . . . was it my cat?

this.