Res Ipsa Loquitur

For you see, chickens is stupid in ways that non-chicken owners fail to understand. Take for example the beak-trimming that PETA's all up in arms about....it's necessary to prevent chicken-on-chicken violence. Chickens, like many extremist liberals, do not tolerate diversity. A chicken that is perceived to be different will be attacked and pecked to death by the others in its flock....come to think of it, chickens are a lot like extreme liberals.

There isn't much room in their little chicken brains for independent thought, so most of their behavior is instinctual, hard-wired...pre-coded if you will. Most of their thoughts revolve around food/not food, mate/not mate and threat/not threat. They do not read Foucault or Marx...they remain unaware of their oppression. Try reading to a chicken sometime, you'll see what I mean.

And chickenhouse chickens have it pretty good by chicken standards....all the food & water they could ever want, climate controlled environment, protection from predators. I doubt they dream of chasing grasshoppers through the meadow....in fact, I doubt chickens dream at all. Sure their lives are short, but not as short as they would likely be if they were set free. There's a reason hens lay so many eggs, few of her offspring would survive out in the cold, cruel world. We're not the only ones that think chickens are tasty, you know.

This is not to say that because chickens is stupid they don't deserve humane treatment....all creatures do. But gassing them as PETA proposes strikes me as being particularly cruel, trapped in a room, fighting to escape as the air slowly turns poisonous. They may be stupid, but they can understand there's a threat in that situation. A ride on a conveyor belt and a quick off with their heads is far less stressful because they have little or no idea of their impending doom. They probably think they're on some fun carnival ride on which there'll be food at the end because, you see, chickens is that stupid.

So weep not for our fine feathered friends, they don't have it so bad in the overall scheme of things. Eat and be eaten is the way of the world....happens to us all. I'd bet chickens would take a relatively safe & comfortable life followed by a quick death over the uncertainties of wild living followed by a painful death from a predator any day.

Maybe chickens ain't so stupid after all.