Did you consult your sacred chickens?

During the First Punic War the superstitious Romans consulted the gods through a group of sacred chickens.  They would throw out chicken feed.  If the chickens ate, victory was assured.  If the chickens refused to eat, loss was warned.

'But, what else do predictions and presentiments of coming events imply, than that the events are shown and indicated, foreboded and foretold to men? And hence figurations, indications, portents and prodigies are so called. So that, even if we regard Mopsus, Tiresias, Amphiaraus, Calchas, and Helenus as so many fictions of dramatic license —though even the dramas themselves would not have employed them as augurs, if the actual fact altogether rejected them—are we not taught even by instances at home to acknowledge the power of the Gods? Shall the recklessness of P. Claudius in the first Punic war have no effect upon us, when mocking the Gods merely in jest—as the [sacred] chickens taken from the cage would eat nothing—he ordered them to be drowned, so that they might drink, as they refused to eat? That sneer, however, brought much sorrow to himself, through the defeat of the fleet, and heavy loss to the Roman people. Well? did not his colleague, Junius, in the same war, lose his fleet in a storm for having disobeyed the auspices? And so, Claudius was condemned by the people, and Junius sentenced himself to death. ~ Cicero - De natura deorum [1]