50 / Chapter 2
The rescuers again pleaded with Buckeye to remove the living
birds to sheltered areas where they could receive food and water.
Buckeye declared that only company workers were allowed to res-
cue birds and sent six workers to each shed. Although this action
was intended as a display of concern, the reality was that each team
of six employees would be tasked with the impossible job of rescu-
ing over a hundred thousand birds. Buckeye set up one rescue area,
but the majority of the birds, living and dead, were thrown into
front-end loaders and packed into dumpsters. Bauston describes
the scene:
I watched what the Buckeye Egg Farm called their “rescue”
operation. The “bird removal crew” consisted of six to eight
workers—6 to 8 people to remove almost 100,000 birds
from piles of debris and mangled cages. It was agonizingly
slow... and cruel. The workers grabbed the birds by the
legs and threw them into a tractor loading bucket. The trac-
tor then drove to a large trailer, and dumped the live birds
into it. The birds fell, fl apping their wings and screaming,
onto the other birds in the trailer, who lay dead, or dying.
A tarp was then pulled over the trailer, and CO2 gas was
pumped into it for 5 minutes. When the tarp was pulled
back, many of the birds lay gasping—until the next loader
full of birds was dumped on top of them.^21Just as Walker had observed the workers bulldozing around a
few small islands of living birds after Katrina, the workers at Buck-
eye displayed different attitudes toward the birds when rescuers
were present. As Susie Coston of Farm Sanctuary recalls:
We were showing [the workers] how we hold the birds. The
workers tended to grab them by the legs and swing them
out and hold them upside down, which is very disturbing,
especially if the birds are injured. It can just cause further
injury. They handle them as a product. They don’t handle
them as a bird. So, the people who were coming from the