Cluck, cluck

So the bird flu is in India. Prices of mutton and fish have dramatically increased and chicken price has plunged. The government in various states is killing chicken on poultry farms en masse. Tens of thousands of chickens are being killed.

A medicine/poison is put in the water a chicken is about to consume. A chicken must ingest 5ml of the treated water and dies slowly over the period of two to three hours. After the chicken dies, it emits a foul odor.

The sister of the lady-of-the-house has a huge business selling, exporting all chicken products. She had seven hundred people working for her. The whole family is tied up in the business- her children and her children's spouses. Their chicken products were exported to the UK , huge orders from airlines, all halted and huge carriers returned from the UK unopened. She has had to close her factories and has to watch the government kill their chickens and dispose of the eggs. She's been appealing to ministers to find out what is going on because this is the season that chickens get sick with some other chicken illness and nothing like this has occurred before. When I was told this and nodded empathetically, all I could think was "don't put all of your eggs in one basket." The phrase pulsed along in my mind like a ticker-tape. It's been going through my mind all day.

So much chicken-talk and meat-talk and non-veg talk change to veg-talk flew around me all day. Since the summer of 2000, when the room I stayed in shared a half-wall with a chicken coop, the only thing I have ever been very aware of hating is the sound of chickens.

No egg whites, no chicken at all for a while, because the state is acting as a parent and cutting off access to chicken.

It's for a good reason, it's for a good reason, it's for a good reason- changing the ticker tape.