4. Terri Farm
9. "They give me the creeps," Maria says, rubbing Palo’s feet, trying to break the knots that are cramping his toes. He grunts, trying to listen to the radio and listen to her at the same time. If tomorrow is raining the chickens will crowd towards the middle of the chicken house and there will be more dead than usual. On the other hand it will cool things down so maybe there will be fewer dead.
His job mostly involves pulling the dead ones out and throwing them in the bins. They're trucked off. He thinks maybe they get ground up and fed to dogs. They kill each other a lot of ways. On purpose and by accident and sometimes they start by accident and finish on purpose. They peck at one another all day long, nothing else to do all jammed together like that except figure out who is in charge. The ones that get pecked and pushed away from the food, which comes down the sluice in the middle, are likelier to get hurt when something scares them and they all rush to the same place, thinking it will be safe. They get pulled under foot, and stepped on and they end up with broken feet and eyes scratched out. Then after that the other ones come at them harder and after a while Palo will notice there's sort of an eddy, a hill where things should be flat. So he takes his stick with a claw, and hooks out the body.
They could just keep them in cages and that wouldn't happen. Other things happen but not that. In cages they'd be held so tight they wouldn't be able to turn around. The ones that got scared easily would scrape their necks on the mesh. They'd pluck out their own feathers--of course they do that now too, and each others' feathers. He thinks that they probably lose a few more birds this way but they get bigger and they sell them for a little more because they aren't in the cages. And it gives him a job, watching with his claw, like the bird so high up it doesn't even have to bang feathers with the next one down to prove where it belongs.
Actually that isn't true. There is a belligerent rooster that would like to take him down a notch and he always has to keep an eye out when he comes into the long shed where the birds range back and forth. The rooster is watching for him. It's almost a kind of romance, the way he comes running up to him, then leaps up, claws up to strike and spin. He might like to pick that one out, for his spirit, breed him down into one of the bright tough birds they used to fight back home, back in the camps. But that isn't going to happen, the cocks are all capons anyway. He just has something going on that remembers the way things ought to be.
Palo is maybe thinking too much about that now, thinking about how much he is turning into one of these chickens. He and Maria and the other workers have their own rooms now, sheds a little smaller than the chicken yards but built on the same lines with sheet metal sweeping down, crackling in the sun. Balloon frame walls. He was here when they put them up. Water at the tap now piped into each kitchen, but still coming from the same flat tinny tasting source, through black pipe that takes up the taste of hose in the sun.
Behind the chicken sheds are the new sheds. These have cinder-block walls, and a lot of piping and electricity, a lot of stuff going on inside. They have generators too so that even if a thunderstorm knocks out the power, lightening cracking on a transformer as happens pretty regularly, the lines will continue. Not open all the way like the chicken houses, or quartered like the laborers' units--two rooms, a stove, a sink and a toilet apiece; a shower to share between every four. The Terri sheds are two tiers high, four long rows with eight in each row, air-conditioned and full of humming and ringing machines. Maria works there now. The job is not all that different from Palo's. She takes care of them and when they die she reaches up and turns the things off and they go away. Only probably not to pet food. And so far, she hasn't actually seen one die.
The Terris--most of them are women and most of them are old but she knows they all really aren't called Terri-- come to them from all over. After a certain point there isn't much to do with an old person or a hurt person except to let them die. Nothing is left to try to fix. Things wear out, people aren't made of pieces that you can replace or upgrade. If you think of them that way, anyway, these are like manual typewriters or old electric ones. They aren't anything you'd bother repairing. Just dump and upgrade. But that isn't going to happen.
Terri Shaivo is the first Terri. She's the one they fought to keep alive. The law churned around her like the chickens stepping on one another and then she went down. But later, here and there they changed that law. So depending on where you are and who cares and what's the matter, you get to a certain point and then there's nothing to do but die, except you're not going to. There’s so many ways to keep you alive. Not exactly a 'you'. But the blood pumps around and the eyes open and close. And after a while, the beds in the hospitals and nursing homes are full, with people who aren't going to get better, and there's no room to take people who might get better if only there was room.
That's when the Terri Farms started. They bring them out and take care of them. It's a little like nursing but its more like taking care of the chickens or, actually, most like taking care of the pigs and veal calves in their pens. They don't move around. In fact, it's easier with the Terris because they mostly don't want to move. You do the same kind of thing, keeping them washed down, keeping the pens clean and putting a lot of antibiotics into the feed so they don't get sick. The air gets filtered to keep it clean inside. A lot of the equipment that the farm used when it still raised hogs just got reengineered for the Terris. It's the first one in this section of the state and it's almost full now. Taking care of the Terris is a lot more profitable than raising beef.
9. "They give me the creeps," Maria says, rubbing Palo’s feet, trying to break the knots that are cramping his toes. He grunts, trying to listen to the radio and listen to her at the same time. If tomorrow is raining the chickens will crowd towards the middle of the chicken house and there will be more dead than usual. On the other hand it will cool things down so maybe there will be fewer dead.
His job mostly involves pulling the dead ones out and throwing them in the bins. They're trucked off. He thinks maybe they get ground up and fed to dogs. They kill each other a lot of ways. On purpose and by accident and sometimes they start by accident and finish on purpose. They peck at one another all day long, nothing else to do all jammed together like that except figure out who is in charge. The ones that get pecked and pushed away from the food, which comes down the sluice in the middle, are likelier to get hurt when something scares them and they all rush to the same place, thinking it will be safe. They get pulled under foot, and stepped on and they end up with broken feet and eyes scratched out. Then after that the other ones come at them harder and after a while Palo will notice there's sort of an eddy, a hill where things should be flat. So he takes his stick with a claw, and hooks out the body.
They could just keep them in cages and that wouldn't happen. Other things happen but not that. In cages they'd be held so tight they wouldn't be able to turn around. The ones that got scared easily would scrape their necks on the mesh. They'd pluck out their own feathers--of course they do that now too, and each others' feathers. He thinks that they probably lose a few more birds this way but they get bigger and they sell them for a little more because they aren't in the cages. And it gives him a job, watching with his claw, like the bird so high up it doesn't even have to bang feathers with the next one down to prove where it belongs.
Actually that isn't true. There is a belligerent rooster that would like to take him down a notch and he always has to keep an eye out when he comes into the long shed where the birds range back and forth. The rooster is watching for him. It's almost a kind of romance, the way he comes running up to him, then leaps up, claws up to strike and spin. He might like to pick that one out, for his spirit, breed him down into one of the bright tough birds they used to fight back home, back in the camps. But that isn't going to happen, the cocks are all capons anyway. He just has something going on that remembers the way things ought to be.
Palo is maybe thinking too much about that now, thinking about how much he is turning into one of these chickens. He and Maria and the other workers have their own rooms now, sheds a little smaller than the chicken yards but built on the same lines with sheet metal sweeping down, crackling in the sun. Balloon frame walls. He was here when they put them up. Water at the tap now piped into each kitchen, but still coming from the same flat tinny tasting source, through black pipe that takes up the taste of hose in the sun.
Behind the chicken sheds are the new sheds. These have cinder-block walls, and a lot of piping and electricity, a lot of stuff going on inside. They have generators too so that even if a thunderstorm knocks out the power, lightening cracking on a transformer as happens pretty regularly, the lines will continue. Not open all the way like the chicken houses, or quartered like the laborers' units--two rooms, a stove, a sink and a toilet apiece; a shower to share between every four. The Terri sheds are two tiers high, four long rows with eight in each row, air-conditioned and full of humming and ringing machines. Maria works there now. The job is not all that different from Palo's. She takes care of them and when they die she reaches up and turns the things off and they go away. Only probably not to pet food. And so far, she hasn't actually seen one die.
The Terris--most of them are women and most of them are old but she knows they all really aren't called Terri-- come to them from all over. After a certain point there isn't much to do with an old person or a hurt person except to let them die. Nothing is left to try to fix. Things wear out, people aren't made of pieces that you can replace or upgrade. If you think of them that way, anyway, these are like manual typewriters or old electric ones. They aren't anything you'd bother repairing. Just dump and upgrade. But that isn't going to happen.
Terri Shaivo is the first Terri. She's the one they fought to keep alive. The law churned around her like the chickens stepping on one another and then she went down. But later, here and there they changed that law. So depending on where you are and who cares and what's the matter, you get to a certain point and then there's nothing to do but die, except you're not going to. There’s so many ways to keep you alive. Not exactly a 'you'. But the blood pumps around and the eyes open and close. And after a while, the beds in the hospitals and nursing homes are full, with people who aren't going to get better, and there's no room to take people who might get better if only there was room.
That's when the Terri Farms started. They bring them out and take care of them. It's a little like nursing but its more like taking care of the chickens or, actually, most like taking care of the pigs and veal calves in their pens. They don't move around. In fact, it's easier with the Terris because they mostly don't want to move. You do the same kind of thing, keeping them washed down, keeping the pens clean and putting a lot of antibiotics into the feed so they don't get sick. The air gets filtered to keep it clean inside. A lot of the equipment that the farm used when it still raised hogs just got reengineered for the Terris. It's the first one in this section of the state and it's almost full now. Taking care of the Terris is a lot more profitable than raising beef.
Labels: right to die
posted by Dr K at 9:03 PM
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