abattoir visit

I left in icy darkness early this morning. By the time I got out to the farm, I swear the stars had brightened and everything glowed with a pale light: it had snowed overnight.

The meat birds were awake and milling about outside their shelter, so gathering them into the shipping crates took longer than expected. Their calls of surprise tolled in the cold air as they were gently packed up.

The morning grew stunning as we drove, such that I found myself giving thanks for 

When we arrived, one lone chicken was loose in front of the concrete building. It was missing so many feathers, I wondered if it had escaped from a plucking machine. But then I remembered that chickens were usually dead by that point, and then I wondered if it was headless. That was how few feathers it had left on its scrawny body.

Later, I discovered piles and piles of crates with the same featherless birds inside, many with big, beautiful, brown eggs. I was confused again, since meat birds don’t usually reach laying age. But then I figured it out: spent hens. These poor birds have spent their whole lives four to a cage, getting pecked featherless, pumping out eggs. I read recently that spent hens can no longer be used by the soup industry as their bones are too weak from the unsustainable egg-laying schedule that's been bred into them. They shatter through the slaughtering process, making the meat unusable. Those perfect eggs so incongruous next to the skeletal creatures that birthed them.

Outside, the smell hits me right away, still preferable to the inside: some kind of burning flesh and of course a hint of shit. Behind the main building, there is a round, cinder block building with smoke coming out it: that must be the smell. Some kind of rendering or something, maybe the viscera. Maybe the feet or heads. And there are more smells puffing out through vents from the main building in clouds of fetid steam.

She talks of Jane Siberry, "Calling All Angels," and the anecdote she heard at a recent concert, of New Yorkers playing the song in Central Park after 9/11.

When we get back to the farm, she tells me my coat will take a while to air out.

At home, I look up the song.

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Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah
Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Domenica, Mary Angelica
Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronilla
Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir and all the rest

Oh, a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries
High above, you can hear the church bells start to ring
And as the heaviness, oh the heaviness, the body settles in
Somewhere you could hear, a mother sing

Then it's one foot then the other as you step out on the road
Step out on the road, how much weight, how much weight?
Then it's how long and how far and how many times
Oh, before it's too late?

Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
Walk me through this one, don't leave me alone
Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
We're trying, we're hoping, but we're not sure how

Oh, and every day you gaze upon the sunset
With such love and intensity
Why, it's ah, it's almost as if you could only crack the code
You'd finally understand what this all means

Oh, but if you could, do you think you would
Trade it all, all the pain and suffering?
Oh, but then you would've missed the beauty of
The light upon this earth and the sweetness of the leaving

Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
Walk me through this one, don't leave me alone
Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
We're trying, we're hoping, but we're not sure why

Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
Walk me through this one, walk me through this one
Don't leave me alone

Calling all Angels, calling all Angels
We're trying, we're hoping, we're hurting, we're loving
We're crying, we're calling
'Cause we're not sure how this goes