HebTehila Ozery Yariv
Photography: Anonymous for Animal Rights
The beginning of my life – I remember that I was lying in a dark place, with warm liquids covering my body. I think that once in a while I heard weak voices that calmed me down. The darkness was also comforting. My body was limp and relaxed, as I floated peacefully in my own silence. Today I realize that those were the happiest moments of my life.
One day came and it was all over. I changed shape and dimension. Everything started shaking around me, and through my shut eyelids I could sense a sharp light that suddenly penetrated through a narrow crack at the top of my egg. I didn’t dare lift my head or open my eyes, and my tiny heart began beating rapidly. A wave of confusing feelings washed through my body and I started twisting, moaning and struggling. I think it was at that point I realized that my life had changed forever.
The cracks on the egg turned into fractures until it completely fell apart, and I burst out into the world. My thin down was soaking wet, I was freezing cold and blinded by the light. Around me I heard loud chirping sounds, so I also chirped. I called my mother, because I wanted to hide between her feathers, so she could dry me and make me warm, but it was all in vain. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t waiting for me.
From there on I vaguely remember noises of conveyor belts, strong lighting, and how my body was quickly tossed from place to place. Occasionally a human hand lifted me, felt my organs and tossed me back. I went up and down, fell and got up, and became dizzy and disoriented. I was carried away in a giant flow along with my brothers and sisters, I was knocked down and injured numerous times (I recall that once I flipped on my back and couldn’t get up, until another wave of chicks came and shoved me further away). I had no control over my body. A sharp pain sliced my right wing, and everything was yellow in my eyes, so I shut them close once again, hoping that this nightmare would soon end. Eventually I was fired out of a metal sleeve into a box with many other chicks just like me, and then finally I had some peace. I tried to rest but I barely could. Unfortunately I was stuck in the center of the box, and could hardly breathe. I was crushed between a bunch of other crowded and terrified chicks just like me, and my whole body was still in pain. My box wasn’t the only one, as there were thousands more like mine. We waited there for hours for something to happen, I was thirsty and hungry. I fainted.
When I woke up I heard people shouting, and I felt my box begin to move, we were all put in a truck and started moving on the road.
When the truck reached its destination I was tossed from the box along with my friends onto the floor of a huge building. Finally I could breathe, spread my wings, begin walking on my own, and drink. I was so thirsty.
The days passed, my wounds healed, and we settled down in our new home. We received food that tasted odd but we got used to it, we ate a lot; we didn’t have anything better to do.
Once a day people came in and I saw them picking up things from the floor and throwing them into a wheelbarrow. I should have known then that something bad was going to happen.
My body started going through a change, and I could barely take it. I felt a massive pressure on my chest, and my legs started hurting more and more as days passed by. The yellow down fell off my skin and I grew white feathers. Everything was happening too fast, and before I could get used to one pain I was introduced to another. One morning I woke up, unable to breathe. The smell in the chicken coop had also changed, and the floor was covered with urine and feces, layers upon layers, an intense smell came through my nostrils, a stench I couldn’t avoid, my eyes burned, but there was nowhere to run, and even if I wanted I wasn’t able to. My body had swollen so, I couldn’t stand on my legs for more than a few seconds, everything inside me was burning, and I couldn’t sleep. The agony I had endured at the chicken hatchery suddenly seemed like nothing.
People continued coming in once a day, and at that point I already realized what it was that they were picking up from the filthy ground. I hoped that they would take me too, and end my suffering.
One day we noticed that they stopped feeding us. After a few hours we were really exhausted and hungry. At midnight, the door to the chicken coop opened and many people entered at once. They crowded us to the walls of the chicken coop and I was compressed under a pile of my heavy friends, we were all beating our wings, feathers flying in all directions. . The stench of ammonia rose above us and covered us completely. We screamed in fear, as we didn’t know what was happening. The people captured the live chickens and took them out of the chicken coop. Then it was my turn, and I felt a hand grasp my legs tightly, turning my distorted body upside down. My head hit the floor, the weight of my body crushed against my lungs, my throat was dried out, and I rolled my eyes in suffering. With brutal violence they shoved us into crooked and broken cages and onto a truck.
I will never forget the cold that I felt that night. We traveled for hours, terribly cramped in horrible twisted cages. A rusty bump of steel injured my buttocks again and again, and every time I tried to avoid it I created panic in the cage. We were all angry and broken. Every time that the truck came to a stop the bump would stick deeper into my flesh.
We arrived at a place with the silence of death surrounding us. The people unloaded our cages and drove away. Morning came upon us. Many of my friends didn’t make it through the journey; in my cage alone three died.
But the real nightmare took place on the afternoon of the next day when they began taking us out of the cages.
I saw my friends being carried by their broken wings to the butcher. I saw him slit their throats while they were fully conscious, and I heard them being tossed into metal buckets while as they continued to shudder there for minutes, as life escaped them . The sound became stronger as more chickens were added to the bucket. “50 thousand a day,” I heard him say. I saw them hanging from their legs, struggling, a few of them entered the feather plucking machine still alive. Their heads were intensely crimson, and still fighting for their lives. I saw my brothers and sisters, as they left one by one, until they were all gone.
Evening came, and it was my turn. I was forty two days old.
