I-95 becomes chicken stew

The chickens were on their way from North Carolina to a slaughter house in New Jersey when the truck carrying them took a curve too fast on an Interstate 95 ramp and overturned.

The accident happened just after 11 a.m. Thursday, but early Friday police, veterinarians and the animal rights activists were still at the scene trying to sort the fowl from the truly foul.

Dead chickens were everywhere.

Those that survived didn't have the good sense to flee -- they flocked together in the center of the highway waiting to be rounded up so they could be placed on another truck bound for the slaughter house.

Traffic on the busy corridor was snarled for miles. Even after the birds were removed from the highway, the Virginia State Patrol and local police had to deal with animal rights activists who sought to protect the surviving hens.

"I was out there for six hours," said Julie Beckham, a member of United Poultry Concerns, a group that believes chickens get a raw deal on their way to the dinner table.

"About 30 percent died from stress and suffocation. Some were cannibalizing each other, which is something they do in crowded situations. I saw crate after crate with seven birds in a crate, some living and some dead. It was so crowded the dead were suffocating the living."

Beckham said the birds were headed for a spent hen facility, where egg laying chickens are taken when they are past their prime.

"A spent hen is really not economically productive," she conceded. "There bones are so fragile and these hens were so bruised that they would probably be made into chicken soup."

For all the efforts of the animal enthusiasts, the chickens that survived were bound for destruction anyway. All except three of them, that is.

"We found three still roaming around," said Beckham. "We named them Daylight, Frankie and Johnny. They're going to have a new home. A human family just took them away. They're going to get to do chicken things now."

Perhaps they'll even fly the coop.

Copyright 1995 The United Press International Greetings, all...

I am still a bit numbed by Thursday/Fridays events, but after reading the story above I feel compelled to share. And to ask for help....

Thursday/Friday at around 12:30 am, I received a phone call from an ex-PeTA staffer and housemate of mine asking myself and a couple of friends of his that were staying here for some emergency assistance.

The emergency? The story above w/o the pitiful attempt at humor...

A truck delivering some former laying hens to slaughter lost its load on the highway just south of DC in Virginia. Dozens of crates which held thousands of chickens were strewn on and along the roadside at about noon Thursday.

At about 5pm, PETA was alerted and approximately 6-10 individuals went to the site to see if anything could be done for the birds. Most of them were still alive, still crammed 6-10 in small plastic crates used for transportation and literally cooking in the seasonal heat because of the lack of shade available to them at the roadside.

It was soon clear that the most humane course of action would be to euthanize the suffering birds before sunrise. The owner of the poultry co. was apparently unwilling to give them up - and even if they had been in decent shape, to my knowledge there was no place either willing or able to house that many birds, especially chickens as messed up as these, at such short notice.

Try as they might, the PeTA volunteers realized there was simply no feasible way for them to get to all of the animals before the sun rose again and complicated the already dire situation.

Hence the phone call to my home at 12:30 am...

Volunteers were desperately needed to help euthanize the remaining chickens. Not knowing the full scope of what remained ahead, my housemates guests and I hurried off to PeTA's Aspen Hill sanctuary to awaken the sleeping interns housed there -- there was some problem with the phone -- climbed the 10 foot fence surrounding the property, roused the interns and trekked off to VA.

I was not prepared for the enormity of what I found upon arrival...

Stacks of hundreds of yellow shipping crates were strewn about along the side of the now closed off highway ramp. The crates were covered with excrement and blood. Of course, each was crammed near full with 6-10 dead and dying birds.

We set to organizing the crates first.

A couple of Humane Officers were on hand to euthanize the birds. We set up an assembly line system where empty crates were placed behind the officers to house the birds which had been injected while the full crates were stacked in front of them where volunteers could recover the chickens, hold them while they received the injection and then placed them in the crates placed in back near the road as they neared death.

With literally thousands of birds, this took all night with few lulls.

Ingrid (Newkirk), Neal (Barnard) and a few others arrived on the scene at around 3 am. They too went to work euthanizing the chickens that hadn't already died from shock, trauma and who knows what else. You name it.

Around 4 am, I stopped working the crates and went to work filling the syringes with the solution needed to put the chickens 'down.' With daybreak drawing ever near we were forced to now move from crate to crate to crate, lifting out each chicken one at a time, injecting them and finally placing them back inside the crates as they started to fade.

I wondered how it must've been for the still alive birds to be surrounded by other dead and dying chickens. Couldn't've been pleasant...

Around five am, I went to holding the chickens that were still alive, while Neal injected them. Around seven am I went back to filling syringes and around nine am, I and a few others took to holding the remaining chickens -- one at a time -- while they died. The owner of the poultry co. had already begun repacking the crates --- now filled with dead chickens onto another truck.

They seemed very concerned with getting their crates back...

Not one of the poultry company employees lifted a finger to help the injured birds.

We left around 10:30 am Friday. And sat around like a zombie for the rest of the day.

I am filled with rage. As yet unfocused anger, except to say that the process of first holding the chickens while they were injected and then while they convulsed and died affected me profoundly. The smell remained on my hands until mid-day Saturday no matter how many times I showered or washed.

Now tonight while during my usual Sunday night news search, I run across the bit of trash presented above. How nice it must be to sit behind your desk in the UPI press office, munching on your McNuggets without a care in the world as to what went into the making of your meal...

How nice it must be to be able laugh off large-scale misery from the safety of your desk...

How nice it must be to write off an attempt to end suffering without needing to get your hands even a little bit dirty...

Now, oddly enough, I find myself in the throes of co-organizing World Farm Animals Day to be held on the anniversary of Gandhi's birthday on October 2nd. And I do so with renewed and profound understanding of the suffering that so-called farm animals endure because I've seen it.

Up close.

I've smelled it.

I've washed their blood off of my body and off of my clothes.

I've held them while they convulsed and died.

There's simply no excuse for being shy about asking for help anymore.

Please, if you've got anytime at all to spare in the week prior to October 2nd, sponsor an event in your own community. I'm asking because they can't.

I am struck by the sheer numbers of animals killed each year -- one at a time -- in a way I never have been before.

These were only a fraction of the animals killed every day ...

These were only the ones who fell off the truck...

I thank you.
Be well, my friends...

Lawrence Carter-Long
DharmaLCL@aol.com or DharmaNews@aol.com