A Hen and her Little Boy Friend

I love this video.  It's a little boy opening his arms to a chicken, and it comes to him and accepts a warm hug.  Pretty amazing, and a beautiful thing to see. How lucky this hen is. Poultry rarely gets anything close to kindness from humans   How many billions of these docile birds are killed and turned into McNuggets and drumsticks every year.  They have been reduced to commodities on a balance sheet, and their lives are an endless, horrific cruelty in the name of cost savings and profit.

H.G. Wells wrote a book called, The Time Machine. In it, a 19th century man created a machine that carried him into a distant future, where he found humans living a seemingly idyllic life. Only later did he learn the dominant species were a grotesque deviation of humanoid called Morlocks, who raised humans to live only long enough to mature, whereupon they were killed and eaten.  At least in that instance, the Morlocks  allowed their human food stock a few years of cruelty-free existence.  Animals raised for human consumption these days get nothing like that. Chickens are jammed in cages from the time they hatch. Their feet become infected from standing on wire mesh all day, every day. Their beaks are cut off to prevent them from pecking each other, thus damaging their commoditized flesh.  It diminishes us as humans to treat other creatures this way.

The boy in this video has been taught to express empathy to his feathered friends, and they in turn have learned to trust him. Yes, it's idealistic, but kindness is always a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is the video of a hen accepting some love from a little boy...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxo1mZeY68&feature=youtu.be