"What is vegan?", he asked after a long pause.
He was calling the sanctuary hoping to find a home for the chickens he had been ordered to dump in the woods. The birds were deemed "too old for the pot", too "stupid" to keep as pets, and too "ugly" to use as yard decoration, so the ranch owner decided to use them as coyote bait instead.
It was not something Pablo wanted to do but he feared that
openly refusing to harm the chickens would not only jeopardize his
already tenuous job as a handyman at the ranch where he worked in
exchange for a room to crash in and a meager pay to live on, but it
would also prevent him from finding a way to protect the birds. So he
kept putting off the grim task, using every excuse he could think of to
buy time for the condemned chickens, while he secretly searched for a
safe home for them.
But time was running out and, with no internet access, no family
or friends to call on for help, and under explicit threat of being
fired, he found himself forced to appease his increasingly irate boss
with a show of partial compliance: he resolved to take only one chicken
into the woods that night, promising he would return in the morning to
catch and dispatch the others.
And that's how it all began, one frigid winter night when Pablo
was forced to decide which of the six innocents would die. Under his
boss' watchful eyes, he took the one bird who was easiest to catch --
the black rooster who was the least afraid, the one who was the most
confident and talkative of the six, the one who was always patrolling
the edge of the huddle that his family, frightened and suspicious of
humans, often clustered in for protection. The bird who had taken a
special interest in Pablo, keeping him company when he worked around the
coop, allowing him closer to his family than anyone else, and offering a
constant stream of comments and observations in sounds whose meaning the man did not understand but whose substance he recognized as trust.
The rooster did not move when Pablo entered the yard. He just
stood there, as if waiting for a friend, and he didn't protest when the
man picked him up, held him, tucked him in his jacket and carried him
away. He was not afraid, this fragile bird, he trusted the gentle human
whose proximity he had welcomed in the past, and whom he always greeted
with a high pitched purr, a unique sound reserved just for Pablo: his
"name" for this man.
The walk from the coop to the truck was the longest 30 yards of
Pablo's life. He didn't want to think of what he was about to do, he
didn't want to feel his own sadness, or imagine the despair that would
soon engulf the doomed rooster, he just wanted to get the dreaded task over
with as quickly as possible, hoping that the pain of harming this
defenseless soul would be brief, that the memory of his dark deed would
fade soon after the job was done, and that the "sacrifice" of one bird
would buy him time to save the others.
He
drove the rooster far into the woods, set him on frozen ground and left
him there. He didn't linger as night fell, didn't look back, didn't
want to think of the next hours, or perhaps days, in the hapless bird's
life. He just hurried back to his truck and sped back to the ranch as if
fleeing a nightmare.
But the nightmare followed him home. Back in his room, Pablo
couldn't stop thinking about the rooster. He was worried, he was sad, he
was ashamed. The bird's eyes haunted him, what he had done to this
fellow being haunted him. He imagined the bird shivering in the bitter
cold, frozen in fear, blind and helpless in the utter darkness,
screaming in terror as powerful jaws crushed his bones, as he flapped
his broken wings in a last, desperate effort to fly away, as his bloody
feathers covered the ground like the leaves of a strange tree.
Everything Pablo had refused to see and feel as he took the
rooster to his death earlier that evening, was now rushing back into his
mind with haunting, unrelenting precision. He remembered every detail
of the rooster's being. The warmth of the bird's chest against his, the
living current of his breath as he huddled inside his jacket, the brave
drum of his heart, the deep pools of his eyes, the unbearable gift of
his trust. By midnight, Pablo jumped out of bed, grabbed a warm jacket
and a flashlight, and drove back to the woods. Even if the bird was
going to be killed at the ranch, Pablo could not, would not, be the agent of his death.
He
searched everywhere, looked up and around every tree, reached under the
thorny crown of every bush and shrub in the area where he had abandoned
the bird, called out in soft whistles and gentle words, and then waited
silently for the faintest stir, the faintest sign of life. But there was no
response. At dawn, Pablo abandoned the search and drove back to the
work site claiming he was there to "finish the job" but in reality
planning to gather the remaining chickens and hide them somewhere until
he could find a refuge for them (where? for how long? He did not know,
but he knew he could not abandon them).
Bleary-eyed, ragged, exhausted, Pablo thought he was dreaming
when he saw the black rooster standing in front of the coop. And when he
heard that high pitched purr, that sweet trill that was the rooster's
name for him, it brought him to his knees, not because the call was
uttered in anger or recrimination but because -- unbearably -- it was
voiced in joy, in friendship, in forgiveness, and in trust. There he
was, this brave bird, standing in front of him like a small earthly
miracle, like a prophet of life.
It was at that very moment that a ranch visitor Pablo had never
seen before stopped by to chat and, in the course of their casual
conversation, she mentioned Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary.
Pablo called the sanctuary right away and left a long message
explaining the situation in tones of great urgency. When we finally
connected, we agreed to take the birds and bring them to safety. We
talked at length. He lives from paycheck to paycheck (when and if he can
find work), his bright mind was never given the academic stimulation it
craved, he didn't have a home to call his own, he scraped a living
working at remote sites that offered a room to crash in and a menial
pay. He is a genuinely kind, strong, and fair-minded person.
When the details of rescuing and transporting the chickens were
finally in place, he had only one question: "What is vegan?" He
explained that he had first heard the word on our answering machine and
was wondering what it meant. In conversation, we conveyed that being vegan means living one's life without depriving others of theirs. It means not only having the understanding that harming others is wrong, but acting on that understanding by refusing to harm ALL animals, not just the ones we meet face to face, but the ones we never get to see, the invisible ones who are bred and butchered for products none of us needs.
He listened with an open mind, free of prejudice and
defensiveness. We offered abundant information, resources, immediate
help and support as well as the assurance of future help and support
during his transition to veganism. Before he hung up, he added in a soft
voice, as if talking to himself: "I think I've always been a vegan at
heart, but now I will be vegan in real life. I've always loved animals
but I never knew I could live without hurting them for food and other
things. Now I know. Thank you."
Pablo has since expressed a desire to rescue as many of the
animals captive at the ranch as possible. He has read all of the
literature we provided and is hungry for more. He said that the day he
saw the rooster -- now named Pablo in honor of the man who saved his
life and who, in the process, dared to reclaim his own -- when he saw
Pablo standing in front of the coop after having miraculously survived
the freezing cold and the all-engulfing darkness, it was like seeing a
road sign that pointed the way out of the woods, out of the cold, out of
the darkness. THIS WAY, it said. And he followed.
The six chickens are now safe, loved, and free to fulfill their
lives at Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary. They still huddle in their little
family clutch, and they still keep to themselves in the corner of the
yard they claimed as their own. And Pablo rooster is still protecting
them from everyone -- from visiting sparrows and fellow chickens, to
wondering sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and llamas. But they are a very
happy family, a very harmonious group, these three "broiler" hens and
their three "laying breed" roosters. They are gentle, and patient with
one another, and the hens struggle to nurture everyone in their family
despite the burden of living in bodies that are killing them.*
Pablo, the man, is free now, too. Free from prejudice and
denial, free from the soul-killing practice of violence. Free to heal
his own heart, to act on his own deeply held values of justice and
compassion, free to follow the road back to his own true humanity, a
road that started with one simple act of conscience. A conscience is all
it takes to be vegan, after all. Doing the right thing takes no special
skills, no special resources, no special privileges or support. Just a
conscience and the will to act on it.
Joanna Lucas
© 2015 Joanna Lucas
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* "Broiler" chickens are bred to grow morbidly large, morbidly
fast in order to reach "slaughter weight" by
the age of 6 weeks. As a result, they are doomed to suffer crippling
diseases of the heart, lungs, and bones.
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If
living ethically is important to you, please remember that there is
nothing humane about “humane” animal farming, just as there is nothing
ethical or defensible about consuming its products. When confronted with
the fundamental injustice inherent in all animal agriculture—a system
that is predicated on inflicting massive, intentional and unnecessary
suffering and death on billions of sentient individuals—the only ethical
response is to strive to end it, by becoming vegan, not to regulate it
by supporting “improved” methods of producing dairy, eggs, meat, wool,
leather, silk, honey, and other animal products. For more information,
please read The Humane Farming Myth. Live vegan and educate others to do the same.