For Babies, Not Chickens

photo credit: gabi_menashe via photopin cc

I thought I had heard of everything until recently learning about chicken funerals. I understand paying respects to a pet goldfish that has passed before flushing it down, but eulogizing a grocery store chicken?

So with that in mind, let’s pause a moment and pray. Dear Lord, please give save-the-world activists the grace to achieve rationality. Help them to realize that they have the makings of a great comedy skit. And if they lack a sense of humor, at least have them take their show to an abortion clinic where the real tragedy of life might perhaps slap them in the face.

The California-based animal activist group Direct Action Everywhere (mission statement: Until every animal is free) have held public protests in supermarkets; even staging a mock funeral complete with a casket for a chicken. The eulogy includes talk of the “rich emotional lives” the chickens had “filled with desire, curiosity, pain and sorrow, all cut short because they were born of a different species from us.”

At first glance, it would seem to be some sort of flash mob comedy performance. That works in their favor because people pause long enough to watch, surely assuming it’s all one big joke.

I love animals but I’ve never met a chicken with a rich emotional life. My two dogs (who I believe are higher on the evolutionary scale than poultry) are a tad emotional—at least when people come to the door. But I would not even describe their doggy excitement as “rich”—annoying maybe, but not rich.

Why aren’t these people protesting the killing of other people—the little, innocent, unborn ones that infinitely more valuable.

A guy named Wayne has released other almost-hilarious-if not-so-tragic videos of these protests. In another video, the protesters walk through the store, taking turns shouting:

The animals need our voice!

In darkness they cry

In torment they die

Now bloody their bodies lie.

It starts with you!

Direct action everywhere!

The ringleader stands before customers who are waiting to buy their hamburger and sliced turkey and yells: “When you look at the meat case behind you, do you see food or do you see something else?”

A few smart alecks thankfully responded; “Yes, I see food.”

“Why do they have to suffer?” the leader cries out.

One guy walks up to the camera and keeps saying, “Nah, that is BS.”

A young man in a suit holds up a chicken and shouts: “We are here to tell the story of a beautiful life, a life that could have been lived but ended violently.”

On his way out of the store, the videographer asks the leader how he feels about what just took place. If he were saying these things about abortions, I would applaud. Instead, his words should be booed or shouted down if they are ever spoken at a supermarket in your town.

Realize his words are about chickens and consider how it aptly they apply to the unborn. “...it tells me how blinded ordinary people are to the violence that happens behind closed doors. This isn’t good. This is the body of some creature that did not want to die…We want people to realize there is something not right about this. Something has to be done about it and we are hoping that people all over the world will do similar actions so that one day the entire world will see that this is not right and this is not normal.”

Wayne and friends, you have the right idea—valuing life. But do it for the babies.

Copyright 2015 Patti Maguire Armstrong