Anna

When I found Anna, she was sitting silently on the bare wire floor of her cage. She did not move even though the other chickens were stepping all over her, their nails raking against her skin. Anna was so small and quiet, hardly there at all. I knew she had been unable to reach food or water for many days. I felt I simply could not leave her there to starve to death, to become another of the dessicated corpses we find so many of each investigation, rotten bodies imbedded into the wire and trapped there even after the pain and misery that has been their lives is over.

When I lifted Anna out of the cage, I was heartbroken by how light she was. She weighed just over two pounds. She was a full-grown hen, but the sickness and deterioration of her body made her feel like a small bird, like a pigeon, as I gently held her in my arms. We were rescuing another hen that night, Catherine, and we left once she was removed from the cage. I carried Anna out of the shed and began to cross the dark and quiet cornfields that surround the factory. It is strange because the nighttime is so peaceful there, outside; the stars are visible and the sound of wind against the topography of vast crop fields is almost oceanic. You step out of a horrible place that is all about money and greed and exploitation, and the eternal world is there telling you that every lifeform upon its surface has the right to a peaceful existence. Warm clouds were moving across the night sky. I held Anna against me and stepped into the pasture.

It was a long walk back to the road where the car was. I held Anna safely in my arms, but I was really worried that she would not survive the night. She was so weak. She seemed nearly catatonic, and did not move or speak at all the entire time. The only indication that she was even alive was the warmth coming from her, through the brittle yellow feathers that covered parts of her body.

When we got back home, I sat alone in the car with Anna and offered her a drink of water from a plastic syringe. At first she was unresponsive, sitting silently in a box of straw with the same glazed expression she had worn at the factory. I knew how dehydrated she must've been, so I encouraged her to drink by dribbling a few drops of water onto her beak. Finally her mouth began to move, and she drank a full syringe of delicious water. I was flooded with relief. I stroked her dry feathers, smelled the stench of death and disease that clung to her. It felt entirely magical that someone so close to death was going to live.

Because of her broken leg, Anna had to wear a splint and toddle around for a while. But now she is fully recovered and lives on an animal sanctuary with other rescued hens.