On Wednesday, the Northern California animal sanctuary Animal Place will airlift—yes, you read that right: airlift—1,150 elderly laying hens from Hayward, California, to Elmira, New York, in an Embraer 120 turbo-prop.
The price? $50,000.
Northern California is famous for this sort of crackpottery. A few years ago Marin residents paid to fly a chipmunk back to Utah, after it was a stowaway in Dixie Goldsby's car."Most people would say if this was anywhere but Marin, people would just shoot him,"Goldsby trumpeted with the kind of sanctimony Marin residents are best known for. Why not just let it go? This particular chipmunk was not 'native' to Marin county, so good luck finding someone to sell you a house there, foreigners.
Kiera Butler, Tasneem Raja, and Maggie Severns think of much better uses for that $50,000. The most obvious is buying flocks of chicks for 2,500 farmers in the developing world.
But that would actually help people and not be a feel-good platitude for Californians who instead agonize over their First World Problems.
So many chickens are out there? American capitalism has done far better than Herbert Hoover dreamed about in 1928. Republicans promised a chicken in every pot. We now have 6 each:
Has the World Reached Peak Chicken? By Kiera Butler, Tasneem Raja, and Maggie Severns, Mother Jones
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