Challenge: Baby Animals V (Standard Editing)
Location: Queens, NYC
Date: May 16, 2019
Aperture: 5.6
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/75
Date Uploaded: May 19, 2019
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A gentleman in our urban neighborhood keeps some chickens, as pets, for the eggs, for dinner, I don't know. They had just wandered about, facing the dangers of cars, buses on their route, thieves, vandals, cats, raccoons and what have you. A perilous existence. We in the area enjoyed this touch of the rural and bygone, but changes needed to be made. So he built a small coop that abuts the side of his house. One day it was finished and a light shone from within. Five tiny chicks huddled under a heat lamp, sweet and cute as can be. There are wood chips on the floor, a circular feeding station and a hanging quart Pepsi bottle that's been converted into a water dispenser. Sometimes the chicks are asleep, flopped under the lamp. And sometimes they are active and alert, wandering unsteadily around, peering into their world, softly bumping into each other. I try to visit them every day. There are four there now, the fifth is gone.
They're adorable, of course, and my heart melts when I see them, and when I think of them. My harsh title may put some people off, but this reality, perhaps of no ultimate significance to the chicks, is an aching in my heart. Sure I'm heavily projecting human emotions onto them, but still... Also you can see that the chick has had its bill tip cut off, a procedure called "debeaking." I looked it up. Done to keep chickens from pecking each other in developing an order, and some other reasons, it's also a painful procedure that deprives chickens of their sense of touch and finesse in feeding, grooming, etc.. I found it shocking. These chickens will live safe lives, so very much better than the vast majority of their sisters and brothers, and I'm happy for that, but I can't turn away from darker, despite the lamp, realities.
[May. 28th, 2019 10:46:38 PM]
Here they are now, Tuesday the 28th, a day before rollover, and my how they've grown.
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