It's a very fast Scheme implementation, compiles to C and has a pretty decent [library ecosystem](http://eggs.call-cc.org/5/). I've used it to build service monitoring daemons and various utilities. As of version 5 Chicken supports static compilation and can produce a single-file binary, which makes it super handy for a lot of use-cases.

And here I was thinking this was a reference to Chicken.[0]

[0]https://esolangs.org/wiki/Chicken

It's actually a reference to a cat-burglarising penguin.

I wondered the same thing. Apparently a Scheme to C translator. http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/5/Getting%20started

Chicken is also an interpreter.

Chicken Scheme is a Scheme variant. It compiles to C. => https://www.call-cc.org/