Handcranking as a start?

This seems simple, right? A crank, a drive shaft, an egg cam with a rider that moves a rod up and down that is connected to a horizontal level. How can the be translated using gourds? A bottleneck gourd can be the vertical rod and with loosely jointed legs could appear to be jumping up and down. With wire arms/hands, the gourdhead could be following a lively gourd chicken as it drags him along? Small bottleneck gourds could work...mmMmMMMmmm.

Thank you Automata GIFS on Giphy!