Quattro’s Poultry Farm
"Sure, you can have the bird," said Carmen, evidently the owner of Quattro's, over the phone. "You'll have to buy it."
For many reasons, Catskill Animal Sanctuary does not advocate purchasing animals in order to retrieve them from desperate situations. While we’re contacted routinely to save animals on their way to auction, for instance, we generally decline to intervene. Many sanctuaries draw an even harder line than we do: absolutely no purchasing of animals, ever. Why put money into the hands of someone who will simply purchase more animals to abuse? That’s how the thinking goes: through one’s purchase, one continues the cycle of mistreatment.
But just like the auction of the Catskill Game Farm animals described in my first book, this was an exceptional situation. "Norman" had some degree of notoriety, as the radio station had been hyping their "turkey bowl"' for weeks. If she could bring guests to Catskill Animal Sanctuary to discover that turkeys, cows, pigs, chickens and other animals that most humans eat are remarkable in their own right, then we needed to make an exception to our "no purchase” policy.
Julie and I pointed the car in the direction of Pleasant Valley.
FRESH KILLED CHICKENS read a huge sign on the porch of Quattro's old clapboard general store. I stepped inside. A line of people waited at the single cash register. Each person held a newly-slaughtered turkey. Some had geese, ducks, pheasants as well. At the back of the store, guns, ammunition, and camouflage gear lined the shelves.
"Hi," I said to the cashier. "I'm looking for Carmen."
"She's at the counter," she said, pointing behind her.
Another long line. It was, after all, the day before Thanksgiving, and this was THE place, apparently, if you wanted "fresh-killed birds."
A man weighing easily 500 pounds hoisted each package to its eager recipient, who then proceeded to the cash register.
I approached the human Hum=V. "Is Carmen here?"
An elderly woman walked toward me. "Kathy?"
"Yes. Hi, Carmen."
She was a small, bent woman easily in her eighties. Though her hands were gnarled with arthritis, they were strong hands. Carmen was a worker.
She came toward me and took my hand, pulling me to a screen door. We walked into a pantry, away from the eyes and ears of her employees. She looked up at me. "I love animals," she whispered. "I love all animals. I love these birds. I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to."
I could have said so much in that moment, but instead said only, "Why don't you come visit Catskill Animal Sanctuary?"
"Yes. I'd like to do that."
I went to the car to retrieve a brochure, and on it wrote my name and phone number.
Carmen returned to her place behind the counter. I walked out, hurting not just for the millions of birds senselessly slaughtered for this one holiday, but also, somehow, for the person responsible for many of those deaths.
____________________
At the bottom of the drive, a stressed-out Norman still paced in her cage. "We're here to pick her up," I explained to a toothless gentleman who approached our car.
"I'll get her for ya," he offered, and before I could span the few steps between the car and the turkey, reached in to drag her out by the feet.
"Please, let me do it," I insisted as I pushed myself between him and Norman, her terror rising again.
We settled Norman into the back seat in a large crate thick with straw, and began the slow drive back to her new home at Catskill Animal Sanctuary. There, on the day for which millions are slaughtered while those responsible give thanks, one single turkey will discover what it’s like to have room to explore, a spacious barn in which to settle down each night, the freedom to determine how she spends her days. She will be the one to decide how much interaction she wants with other animals—turkeys, pigs, sheep—the various members of our free-range family, while one after the other, her friends face the death squad.
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