Beauty and Cruelty are Having a Fist-Fight in my Front Yard
It’s a beautiful May morning here at the Eastern Shore Sanctuary, which is located in the heart of poultry country. It’s warm and breezy, the wild roses are climbing, and the honeysuckle has just started to bloom. (I wish I could link to the scent for you!)
“Broiler” chickens born in Brooklyn explored the spring greenery in the front yard as I walked toward the small “sickbay” coop that houses our elderly and disabled birds. Then I heard an ominous rumbling. I glanced up from the honeysuckle just in time to see an empty poultry transport truck on its way past my house to one of the factory farms down the road. That can mean only one thing: thousands of birds from my street will be going to their deaths today.
Of course, I always know it’s happening. Here on the Delmarva Peninsula, they kill and cut up more than a million birds every day. But today I will be especially aware of that fact as the transport trucks clatter up and down the street. Here is what they look like, up close:
Often, when a full truck goes by, all of the birds at the sanctuary stop what they are doing, seeming not to know what to do with the terrible energy they must be sensing from the hurt and confused young birds crowded inside. An awful silence hangs in the air for a moment before any of us can go on with our day. (They don’t do this when tractors or other big trucks go by.)
When Martin Rowe of Lantern Books asked me to write Aftershock, I was in the middle of writing memoir of sorts, tentatively called Feathers. Here’s how it begins:
Beauty and cruelty battle it out every day on the Delmarva Peninsula, a seaside vacation destination where 13 million chickens are captured and dismembered — scratching and screaming in a frenzy of blood and feathers — every week of every year. The lush landscape is littered by long, low buildings, each of which houses tens of thousands of birds. Inside the buildings, dying and dead birds in various stages of decomposition lie side by side with live birds destined to be made into McDonalds chicken sandwiches.
The children of the Delmarva grow up in the shadow of acre upon acre of genetically identical corn and soy but some of them sometimes do not have enough to eat. Their parents are poultry “growers” or workers, doing dangerous and demoralizing work for low pay and often entangled in debt servitude to the industry.
The children learn to turn away when the trucks carrying young chickens to slaughter drive by. Encouraged to suppress their natural empathy for animals, they join their parents in activities like hunting, dog fighting, and racing turtles on painfully hot pavement. Every year, tourists from all over the country join them at Chincoteague to watch terrified ponies herded across a channel and captured for auction. The forcible removal of frightened colts from their frantic fathers and mothers is considered by all to be good, clean, family fun.
Attached to the mainland by a narrow isthmus itself riven by a canal, the peninsula functions like an island, often seeming a world away from the rest of the nation on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay hosts a breathtaking array of plants and animals, ranging from the the spectacular Great Blue Heron to the comparatively drab Bay Anchovy, but is also the site of an ever-growing ‘dead zone’ in which underwater animals literally cannot breath. Acres of underwater grasses, which once sheltered Lined Seahorses and served as food to Red-Headed Ducks, have been choked to death by poultry industry wastes and other agricultural effluents.
Polluted water runs through the Delmarva too. Visitors are warned aganst swimming in the Wicomico or Pocomoke rivers while locals are often unable to drink the water from their wells. What was once a lush region of remarkable natural fertility — the “breadbasket of the American Revolution” — now struggles with declining water tables and increasing soil sterility. The people are polluted too, with shockingly high rates of cancer, campylobacter, and child abuse.
Despite these problems, the Delmarva retains much of its original natural beauty. Bald eagles soar overhead while luna moths swoop much closer to the ground. Any bit of land not mowed or trampled or planted by people is quickly overrun by thriving vines and volunteer trees.
In late December of 1999, two dogs, two cats and two big-city lesbian-feminists with Green Acres dreams of ‘getting back to the land’ wandered into this pastoral panorama. This is our story.
The book goes on to tell how we came to start the sanctuary, telling the stories of the birds and tracing the changes that I and my former partner (but still family member and most close friend) Miriam Jones went through in the course of our adventures in animal advocacy. It needs a complete overhaul before it can be what I want it to be, which is a story that will be interesting not only to vegetarians and animal activists but also to liberals who like animals but haven’t ever thought about chickens as birds. It’s got a lot of good stories — our early efforts at chicken care were often comical and the birds are always doing unexpected things — but it needs a stronger narrative line and a lot less political pontificating.
So, what do you think? Should I get back to it? Would you want to read it? More importantly, would anybody you know who isn’t already vegan want to read such a story? I started getting ready to write it when I realized that people in my life (including the non-vegans) were always wanting to hear chicken stories. I started writing it for real when I realized that maybe I have an obligation to share the things that I have seen, so that other people can learn from the birds. Now it’s time to decide: Will it help them? Might it help us? I’m least comfortable writing about myself, so I only want to do it if it will be useful. Seriously, what do you think?
May 16th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Yes, write it! I would definitely want to read it, and I’m guessing that there are a lot of non-vegans who would want to read it as well. I was surprised, after I started volunteering fairly regularly at Poplar Spring, to realize that many of the people helping out at the sanctuary were not vegan. They were not even vegetarian. It shocked me, a bit, but from what Terry and Dave have said, most of the sponsors of the sanctuary residents are not vegan or vegetarian. Strange, but true.
I think they are the ones who would want to read a book about these brave birds. I think people like my mom, who grew up on a small farm in Idaho and who cooks wonderful vegan food for me and actually listens to some of what I say about animal rights and who claims that if she didn’t need to cook for my dad, that she’d go vegan in a heartbeat…I think people like her would want to read this book. And, in fact, need to read a book like this.
Please do write it!
May 16th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Is there a doubt in anyone’s mind? Of COURSE you must continue — not just because everyone loves chicken stories and they do tend to make an actual difference, but because you will use the stories as a springboard from which to make the kinds of connections that SO FEW people in the world are able to make — but which, as another reader observed, are so obvious once you have made them.
FINISH THE BOOK.
Charlotte
May 16th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I heartily endorse the idea also. Many non-vegans and almost all the non-vegetarians I know think of chickens as…well, they don’t think of them at all. They know “chicken” but not chickens. Also, I would suspect most of them have little idea of the human and environmental cost of the modern poulty culture. By personalizing the stories - of the birds, of the people, of you and Miriam - all this might come to life for readers and cause them to see things in a new light, and maybe, hopefully compel them to make changes in their lifestyles.
And…at the risk of being presumptuous, I can’t help but think that Laura and Virgil, who was also working on his memoirs, in anticipation of a book, would be mighty pleased.
May 16th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I’m a huge believer that stories are a powerful teaching tool because they reach around our defenses and speak straight to our emotions. So yes, I think you should continue!
May 17th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I’ll second that motion — I’m from a conservative part of the country, where people in general don’t respond well to animal-related discussions that they perceive as primarily political, but they do respond to personal stories of human/animal interaction that focus on the animals’ personalities and individuality. Those personal stories happen to have political implications, but they don’t feel as threatened as they do by the more overtly political material. Also, I’m getting pretty fed up with the mainstream liberals who are very concerned with some animals - dogs, cats, etc - but who can’t even see the “animal-ness” of farmed animals: they see them as products rather than as individual, living creatures. A book that can help to break that barrier would be a powerful tool in expanding human concern for all animals.
So, yes, the book would be wonderful!
May 17th, 2007 at 11:53 am
This book seems very timely. Not only do we have best-selling authors like Jeffrey Masson writing such books as “The Pig Who Sang to the Moon,” but a major US publisher approached Gene Baur to pen a book about Farm Sanctuary. I think this reflects not just a more compassionate attitude about animals in general, but the public’s growing awareness of farmed animals as more than just food. Singer, Pollan, Mason and others are all asking people to consider where their food comes from. Moreover, your narrative would touch on many progressive issues, making it appealing to a wide audience.
I would think there are at least two reasons to write a memoir: 1) because you need to, and 2) because you’d like to publish it and share your story with others. If this were my project and I hoped to have it published, I would talk to a publisher first to see if there’s any interest in it before throwing myself into the writing. But that’s the way I’ve approached my writing for the last 20 years.
By completing this book, you’d also be spreading the legacy of Viktor, Heartbeat, Godiva, Fanny and all the others. Yes, people need to read their stories, and they need to know that it’s possible for non-animals to help them. I think people (including non veg*ns) would read this, and I would like to see you finish it.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Thanks to everyone who wrote here or wrote to me privately, encouraging me to go on with the project of revising Feathers for publication. You’ve conviced me! It’s now at the top of my list of summertime writing projects.
May 18th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
pattrice, I just saw this, then saw your comment from this afternoon, saying that you’ll revise the book. That’s great news!!
I also look forward to reading your blog regularly. You are the best at presenting things in a different light! So glad you are doing this.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
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March 29th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
[...] tried to write about that for one of my earliest posts, Beauty and Cruelty Are Having a Fist-Fight in My Front Yard. You might want to check it out if you missed it. And, since it’s garden time, you might want [...]