Too sad to live, too sweet to die!

(de Nederlandse versie van het hele levensverhaal van Piepie is hier te lezen)



On the 4th of May  2010, Piepie, only 14 weeks and 2 days old, was put to sleep at 10 minutes past 7 in the evening.
Piepie was a broiler chick. Broilers are bred to grow fast, too fast for their bodies to handle. Piepie's owner tells us the story of his last day:



"We got Piepie from a broiler farmer when he was 2 weeks old, ignorant of the fact that we had taken home an animal that had no chance to live a long and healthy life.  When we entered the broiler shed all the chicks ran away from us apart from one who got stuck in one of the foodcontainers. It was Piepie.  I rescued him and from that very first moment I knew I wanted to take him home with me. He was a very sweet animal. He enjoyed the love we gave him and he gave his love back without limitation.

In the end , we had to feed him four times a day by hand or by keeping his bowl in front of his beak.   Because of his obesity, he could barely walk
and he was gasping for air. The last couple of days he had no more control over his bowels and just let it go. It was a painful situation.

Encouraged by the opinions of other animal lovers, we decided to give Piepie a dignified death. He was still mentally alert. When I gave him his last meal I cried of course. Piepie saw my tears
from where he was laying in his cage. He stretched his neck out and looked me straight in the eyes. We were so intertwined! He also played with the cords of my sweater dangling in front of him.

The time had come to take him to the vet. The vet was very kind and reviewed Piepie's chances of survival: there were none. He was healthy enough though, thankfully, but he had no chance.

For a while we put Piepie in the grass in front of the vet's practice. Piepie picked at the grass and played with the daisies. It was so touching and it made the decision so much more difficult. Here we are two humans making a decision over life or death!


While we were sitting there Piepie's life passed before us and we thought about how it had all begun...

We were at a reunion of people from a tour group that we had made a trip with in 2008. This took place at a chicken farmer's premises. We had heard during that tour that he dealt in chickens/chicks but we did not realise what that actually entailed! I had already told my son: "Chicks are really cute but we are not going to bring any home with us!"

After greeting each other, we went inside one of the three barns that our travelling companion had behind his house. In those three barns were a total of 88,000 chicks, all of whom were about 2 weeks 'old'. We were really shocked when the door was opened. There was a sort of "stink" and it was oppressively hot and very humid and it was also breathtakingly dusty.

The owner told the others the story of his source of income. We must admit that we didn't pay any attention. Our attention was immediately drawn to those poor chicks. When we came in with the tour group, they all rushed back as far as possible away from the man and it seemed like a "blanket" of chicks when you looked at it. In the picture in the barn, it seems that the chickens have a lot of room, but the majority were at the back anxiously pressed together, as far away as possible from us people.

The feeding troughs had "guard rails". Sometimes the chicks were inside the rails eating, but they shot away when you got close. A chick was trapped behind one of these rails. I ran in panic to the owner of the shed and reported that a chick was trapped in the trough. He responded casually: "Oh, he'll escape soon enough." That's when an alarmbell went off somewhere inside of me: Something is wrong here!

Together with my son, I freed the poor animal very carefully from the rails. We checked that the chick was not injured and began to stroke it. The rest had long since run away. They wouldn't let themselves be caressed. They were just afraid! It's so pathetic to think that such young animals live in total just six short weeks in sheer terror.


When we put Piepie back on ground he didn't run away back to the rest of the chicks. No, he stayed calmly next to us and carried on eating and drinking: all that these poor animals do. And he did willingly let us caress him. So that feeling of fear in the animals disappears instantly when they realise that people are okay.

I felt my heart melting when I  realised that the newly rescued chick still had four weeks to go until its death as a chicken fillet, and all that time  it would stay in this hot, choking barn.  I also realised then that four weeks later that same space would be shared by (88.000 divided by the three barns) about 29,300 chickens, which in the same space would practically all be jammed together!

So as not to lose my heart too much to the poor animals I went and stood next to the owner, who was telling our companions about the feeding process. Everything was automatic. The food from the silos was computer controlled with medication, etc. His only job was to monitor the computer  and twice daily to walk from the front of the barn to the back to remove the dead chickens. I cried, quite appalled, "Dead chickens!" "Yes, they die occasionally" was his reply when he noticed my dismay. I asked a few questions, until my son held me back.

My son told me: "It's hard to imagine that  you might be able to buy one of these chicks as chicken fillet in four weeks at Albert Heijn!". Well, that was the right note at the right time. My heart broke! In panic I asked, "Yes, but how can we find that chick, ours, the one that was stuck again? "Oh, no problem," said my son. He had already checked that. He walked toward the chicks. All raced away … but one stayed sitting: Piepie!

That is when we adopted that chick, consciously deciding, we will take you and never let you go. With the chick in hand we walked up to the owner and asked him in the most engaging way, using all our charms: "Can we buy a chicken to adopt?" Astonished, the man looked at us, then had to laugh and said, "Okay". I offered  him money for it, but he refused, and generously gave a bag of their special food, of course containing stuff to promote growth and medication. He also gave us some advice on keeping it warm, food, accustoming it to other food, watching out for diarrhea, etc. etc. Later he sent us friendly emails asking how it was going with Piepie  and called Piepie a 'lucky bastard'.

So on Sunday, February 7 Piepie came home with us. He went into a gift box, which was still in the barn, left over from a Christmas gift and which now served as transportation. We noticed how appropriate that name was, Gift ...... for life. Not so. I straight away made a deal with my son, we will feed him until the Ice Saints, until he is big enough and then Piepie will go to a chicken enthusiast or a petting zoo, so he is saved from death.

At home we put him nicely in a green crate. Well Piepie didn't stand for that! He began in protest to jump for the edge "I want out of here." We were a little bit panicked. What now? Suppose he jumps out and break his legs. So we put a plank on top of it. No, that also wasn't right! He actually jumped (very funny and also shows how strong such a  character is) against the underside of the shelf and continued to do so. So we really started to panic. What now? Fortunately in the attic we had an extra cage for cockateils. We brought it down and Piepie went in it for one night, until we could buy something else. The cage, which was at first much too big, ultimately became Piepie's bed right until the very end!

On Monday I was inside the petshop as soon as it opened and bought chicken granules. I told the owner (she knows me as a customer) in great detail the story of our Piepie. (That Sunday, while making the “request for adoption " we had baptized him Piepie.) I felt instinctively that the food that we had been given was not suitable for making a healthy hen or cockerel out of this 2 week old victim.

Also on the same day I visited a friend who always used to keep chickens for some advice. She listened to my story with concern and said "You have to make sure that he walks a lot, so that he gets big strong legs so that he can carry his own weight, which is going to be a lot" That made the visit very brief. I quickly returned home and took Piepie from the cockatiel cage.

Fortunately, we could let him run around freely indoors (because it was too cold outside), as we have lino. Piepie had use of 3/4 of the room and the kitchen, so roughly 24 m2, so that, in our opinion, should give him strong enough legs to support his future weight  My son hugged Piepie a lot and also played with him. And it will not come as a surprise that one of elements of the playing was "training legs”.

During that first week that we had Piepie as a pet, it became apparent that he was crazy about cheese! And I mean really crazy. I crouched beside him to eat a slice of bread and cheese and he picked the cheese off my sandwich. Great fun of course! He ran away with the whole slice in his mouth, as if to show "This is mine now." So if there was any cheese he always got a little bit, knowing that this was his favorite. When he was in the other room and I was busy in the kitchen and the fridge door opened ..... Yes, then came Piepie at full speed  (quite fast then)  using his wings as extra drive motors for maximum speed, from the front room to the refrigerator, knowing "The cheese is in there!” At that time he got it as a reward. Later, only occasionally as a special treat. I knew I had to make sure Piepie had the minimal number of calories to keep his weight down.

Piepie ate a lot and grew substantially. At one point he weighed 5.6 kilos. Then he began to have difficulty walking. Later it became even harder and he increasingly began to pant. Then I knew deep in my heart, that Piepie was fated to have a short life. At that time Piepie took priority over everything and everyone. No matter what, everything had to wait: Piepie first! That last period of his life, we were there for him totally!

We looked for solutions. As he found walking increasingly difficult, occassionally he slipped on the lino. We put some mats down, but he had difficultywalking naturally and when his legs slid, he wobbled pathetically with his wings as supports. So pathetic! If you looked at the poor animal you knew what needed to be done!

Meanwhile, we had had for weeks a run for him in the garden, bought when he was about 4 weeks old, thus still small and not yet knowing he could never use it! And the idea, that he would go to another chicken lover or to the petting zoo was now long forgotten. He was a full member of our family and until death do us part, he would stay with us.

For two weeks we went through a crisis of conscience! You hope for a miracle, to save the life of your pet, to allow a natural death. Piepie's death on May 4 was not natural. No, he was the victim of industrial farming, doomed from birth with a life that would never be viable: too pathetic to live, much too sweet to die.

When I tried to explain to my son that "putting to sleep" at the vet was actually the only fair and decent option for Piepie, he was furious and told me: "Okay, you go alone, but I will never forgive you for murdering Piepie."
 
That Tuesday, May 4, the decision was still unexpected. The situation had been  distressing for some days. It was only during the May holidays that my son saw the suffering life that Piepie led. Then he began to see – and, of course myself as well - that there was only one decent thing for Piepie: a dignified death in the presence of its two owners, who wanted to save him from death, but now that life had become a burden had to bring his life to an end.

There we sat among the daisies with Piepie in front of us. The decision was taken. Luckily the vet was very accommodating and patient. Piepie first got an injection which made him fall asleep, while we stroked him, because Piepie always enjoyed that immensely and he also had, for the last time, a piece of his favourite cheese.

So that's how he fell asleep. Then the final injection followed.


We went home intensely sad. We put Piepie in his bed, the cocketiel cage that was always waiting for him. Meanwhile, we made a grave for Piepie in a beautiful natural place, facing a fen, lying high so never in danger of coming under water, under the tall pines with a clear view of the starry sky. That night Piepie lay dead in his bed in the living room and on May 5,  precisely at the time of Piepie's death 24 hours earlier, we buried Piepie.

We gave his little body back to earth. From dust, to dust.  At the bottom, on the sand, just like in his bed, first we put a layer of straw, then hay, then the little body, on his leg my Turkish bracelet (which he always liked to peak at and with the Turkish Eye that protects and brings good luck ), the rest of his cheese by his beak and over it again hay and straw and then the sand. Before I put back the original top layer, I planted bulbs and Lilies of the Valley that I had taken from my front yard. The Lilies of the Valley are growing now and next spring, at Piepie's grave, a sea of tulips, hyacinths and daffodils will grow.

Every week on Tuesday evening at 19.10 hrs we now visit the grave and light a purple candle: purple the color of hope. We give our sorrows a place, give thanks to all who think like us and have symphatized with us and for our Piepie: Rest in peace, dearest creature!

In my heart there is no peace, not yet! I must still be able to accept that I did not prolong your suffering, but instead did give you a viable life. And I think I will only find peace when I have made your story, Piepie,  public, in order to bring out our voices against the bio industry. That was your and our mission. And that was why we were bound together on February 7, whereby your painful life was prolonged for a little while.
 
The grief is still as intense as the day we had to put you to sleep. You were so intelligent, with that look of yours. Those penetrating eyes and the way you said “tok tok” when I spoke to you and your tok tok  if there was something or if you needed me. We will never forget you."

                                                                                       Just before he died 

                                                         It all started in this farm, only 2 weeks old 




 


The only film of Piepie