February
2001
Rooster
Run
By Joyce Friedman
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On
the day of the big NYC snowstorm during the final weekend of December
2000, the last thing I expected to see was a white rooster who was standing
in the middle of the snow-covered street next to my apartment in semi-residential
Queens. I soon learned from an eleven year-old boy, who lived in an
adjacent house, that the rooster had a friend who was hiding in the
bushes. Apparently the pair had been hanging out on the boy’s porch
all night, eating seeds from the bird feeder and generally shivering.
I immediately knew I was going to rescue the birds—obviously I
could not let them freeze to death in the snow. I enlisted the help
of the boy who, to my joy, was clearly showing seeds of compassion.
I ran upstairs to my apartment to get cat carriers and towels. Back
downstairs, as I attempted to gently grasp the chickens, onlookers had
various reactions. None cared a whit about getting the rooster out of
the snow except for the boy and myself. Some guys drove by and stopped
to stare at the unfortunate creature. After they learned he wasn’t
“my” chicken, they commented that they’d like to slit
“its” throat and eat “it.” I asked them how they’d
enjoy that happening to them, told them to try a vegetarian diet, and
shooed them on their way; we proceeded with the rescue.
In just a few minutes I had one rooster, who didn’t seem able to
move very well, in the carrier and in the warmth of my apartment. The
other one took almost half an hour of coaxing out of the bushes. During
our rescue efforts, I kept a dialogue going with the boy about how these
are the animals people eat when they eat chicken “nuggets,”
how I don’t eat chickens or any animals anymore, and described
the feelings the rooster must have been having as we pursued him.
Finally both of the guys were in my bathroom warming up their ice cold
feet, combs and wattles. I made some calls to fellow activists who know
chickens well, having rescued them before; my previous rescues until
now had been cats and dogs. The chickens warmed up fine, although a
vet later revealed that one had frostbite on his wattle, and they were
both somewhat underweight. They settled in for a meal and sleep. Chickens
will almost immediately go to sleep when the sun goes down or the light
is turned off or covered.
For the next week they lived in my bathroom, as I had to keep them separate
from my cats and dog. Whenever I felt bad for them in that small room,
I told myself that at least they aren’t freezing and hungry outside
on their way to a certain death, and that it was only temporary. They
spent their time settling down in the hay I got for them, eating and
drinking, and when they got a bit bolder, hanging out together on my
sink. It was sad that they were so afraid of me. They clearly had not
been handled, at least not well, by humans. They did enjoy each other
though, sitting, standing, sleeping and eating side by side. And, in
addition to chicken feed and cracked corn, they simply adored cold tofu.
It was truly a liberating experience for me to place pieces of tofu
in their dishes and watch them eat it up with such apparent enjoyment.
I spent much of the week calling a multitude of sanctuaries. I had learned
a few months earlier at a conference at the United Poultry Concerns
sanctuary that it is very hard to place roosters (as opposed to hens)
and even harder to find a good sanctuary; and my experience now confirmed
this. Yes, I was selective, but one must be with any rescued animals
in one’s care. The roosters became my responsibility as soon as
I rescued them, so they were not going to a place with overcrowded facilities,
or with no heat in the dead of winter, or no predator-proof housing,
or a place where animals were allowed to breed (thusly, not a true sanctuary).
Much of the difficulty was that the decent places could only take hens;
they already had the proper number of roosters to keep a good balance
(unless they greatly outnumber roosters, hens may be overwhelmed and
harmed by aggressive males, especially during mating season). At the
end of the week, I finally found a place on Long Island that houses
over 90 abandoned and abused cats, and happily had ten hens and no roosters!
The person who runs this small sanctuary gives excellent individual
care and love to these animals and is extremely selective when adopting
out cats. The roosters, however, will live their lives there, in a large
backyard and will be protected at night in a semi-insulated, predator-proof
chicken house.
So where did these guys come from? It is suspected that they are the
males of the egg industry who, because they don’t lay eggs and
are therefore useless, are regularly crushed, suffocated, or trashed
alive as chicks. Many times people or pet shops buy male chicks from
egg factory farms so they can have or sell cute, fluffy “pets,”
especially at Easter time. When they mature, they start crowing and
aren’t as “cute” anymore, so they are often dumped. Or,
they are used for religious rituals that involve animal sacrifice.
In any case, these two are still alive now, safe, and getting accustomed
to their new surroundings in eastern Long Island with their new family
of hens. I hope the boy who helped in their rescue will question the
eating of these animals and products taken from them, and that the experience
reinforced his already obvious tendency to reach out to the helpless.
I strongly believe it wasn’t a coincidence that two members of
the most maligned and abused species of animals in our world ended up
abandoned on a street in Queens where a vegan lives, in whose arms they
ended up safe and protected.
To see photos of just how hens who lay the eggs sold in the U.S. must
live their sad lives, please visit a new website by Compassionate Action
for Animals (CAA) in Minnesota (www.banbatterycages.org).
There are photos of activists rescuing hens, a discussion of the cruel
industry’s practices, and links to information on removing eggs
from your diet. The hope of CAA’s campaign is to get nationwide
media to finally show the public what is going on behind the closed
doors of factory farms. So as not to contribute to this utter cruelty,
I urge readers: go vegan!
Joyce Friedman is the Northeast Campaign Coordinator of In
Defense of Animals. To be on the NY IDA Activist Alert Email List, email
joyce@idausa.org. IDA has meetings
in NYC for new and seasoned activists on the second Thursday of alternate
months, from 6:30 - 9pm. Next meeting is March 8. Call the IDA hotline
at 212-462-3068 for meeting location and other events.
