Coming Home to Roost

Friday seemed like a perfect name for my baby chick because I bought him on Good Friday. I picked him out at our local 5 and 10. He cost $.25. Friday was soft, yellow and fuzzy and fit right in the palm of my nine year-old hand. I lovingly took him home where he would live in the kitchen in a long box my brothers and I had found behind the neighborhood furniture store. I spent hours on my hands and knees watching him and talking to him. When I scooped him up, he hopped from my arms to my shoulder to my head, tickling me all the way with his tiny feet. Feeding Friday was pure joy, but my little chick was fast becoming a little rooster.

My parents said we would have to take him to Grandpa’s farm where he could be with other chickens. That day came all too soon. My heart was broken when we left him behind. The $.75 my grandpa paid me for this fine young bird did not ease my pain. I was afraid to imagine that Friday would become someone’s Sunday dinner.

And yet that heart-wrenching experience did not keep me from eating chicken with giblet gravy.

Many years later in the midst of my own health crisis, I became aware that “the chickens are coming home to roost.” The connection between consumption of chicken and eggs and chronic diseases is well documented. Undercover investigators report that both caged and free range animals suffer horrific abuse in dark, disease ridden, crowded conditions. (Dark Side of Egg Production https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN5H9audCRQ&sns=em )

Daily, I read about poultry-waste pollution of water, land and air in my own state of Delaware where the poultry industry is big business. (http://www.capegazette.com/article/delmarva-poultry-industry-applauds-new-legislation/151330 ) And so I have eliminated poultry, eggs, meat and dairy from my diet.

This is Easter week, traditionally a time of joy and new life. Families are pumped up with anticipation for egg dying, egg rolls, egg hunts and Easter baskets. I have always loved participating in these family and community events. But now I know “the chickens are coming home to roost.”  Instead of Joy, I feel overwhelming sadness for the damaging personal choices I and others have made over the years. I am now working tirelessly to re-align my life with what I know to be true—OUR DEMAND for such animal products as chickens and eggs propels human disease, animal cruelty and environmental degradation. I hope others will join me in finding creative ways to celebrate the new life that is possible for suffering people, suffering animals and a suffering global environment.

*This post was first published here March 26, 2018 and is also included in edited form in my forthcoming book GO VEG WITH CLASS to be published this spring.