The phone rang, and when I answered it, a voice said, "The Chicken Mother say you come at midnight, and come alone."
It sounds like the opening to a mystery or mob movie, or a weird dream I might have. But it actually happened.
One of the people in the English class I teach each week is named Harald. He patches together a variety of odd jobs. Two weeks ago he was telling me about one of them, in which he spends 1-2 hours in the middle of the night at a nearby farm helping to move sleeping chickens into crates and onto a truck so they can be sent off to slaughter; the meat is then prepared and packaged for a chain of Swiss grocery stores.
He mentioned how the farmer, who was a woman, would serve cake, fruit and drinks to all her workers following each night's work. I thought it was cute that, not knowing an English word for a female farmer, he kept calling her "The Chicken Mother."
"It pay very good," he added. "One hundred Swiss Francs an hour!"
My ears perked up. That's about 90 or 95 USD. We could certainly use 100 bucks every couple of weeks. And then there's the fact that I secretly harbor a romantic fascination with farm and ranch work, and always wished I could quit my career just for a summer to work on a ranch or farm to see what it would be like
"Do they need any extra hands?" I asked Harald.
I remembered one of my coworkers has also been looking for ways to earn a few extra bucks, so I added that I had a friend who might be interested in this job, too. He said he would find out.
A week later he called our flat and, in his limited English, said, "The Chicken Mother say you come at midnight, and come alone." The "come alone" part indicated that they only needed one additional person, so I would have to leave my friend behind. Still, I had to laugh at the mafia-like way he had used to tell me this.
At 11:30 p.m. the next day, I met Harald in front of an enormous, long building, about a football field (American football) in width and length. Two university-aged girls and three Swiss men in their 20s or 30s waited there, as well. They showed me where to get gloves and a mask to cover my nose and mouth.
After everyone was suited up, we were led into a small room where we had to step in a pan of something soapy they said was disinfectant. Then we went through a door into the massive building.
There were no lights on, but the full moonlight filtered inside. My jaw hung open as I surveyed the gently undulating carpet of white chickens covering every square inch of the vast floor. I have never seen so many animals in one place in my entire life. Harald said there were 10,000 chickens in this room.
"We have to move 5,092 chickens tonight," he said. I counted how many of us there were: seven. Seven of us were going to crate up more than 5,000 chickens in one night?
We carefully stepped between the drowsy chickens that were settled quietly on the floor. In the dark, the guys began hauling in large, rectangular, plastic crates, each with a sliding opening on the top. Harald explained that we had to get 15 chickens in each crate. I watched as the girls laid the crates flat, sat on one end and just started grabbing the chickens nearest to them, stuffing them in the holes in the crates.
I followed suit, counting out loud as I grabbed the warm, soft chickens around their wings to prevent them from flapping. I laid them in the crate, shoving them to either edge to make room for more chickens through the opening.
The chickens must have been pretty groggy because they only protested a little bit, and most didn't even bother to move as we worked our way deeper into the building, shuffling through the soft, mulchy floor.
It was only about 10 minutes before my back became so sore that I was afraid it would go into spasms. Even though I exercise four to five times a week, my legs began trembling from the intensity of this work, and the rapid movements of dipping down to grab a chicken and swinging it around to the crate beside me was making me dizzy. As I got shakier, I worried that I couldn't do this after all. But 10 minutes later, I stopped feeling the pain in my back and learned to sit on the crate instead of trying to squat and bend over.
We worked as fast as we could in the dark. As the crates were filled and closed, the guys would stack them onto a forklift, which carried them out of the chicken house and to a tractor trailer parked outside. Then the forklift would come back with more empty crates, and the guys would drag them toward us as we went further and further into the building.
Sweat was running down my face and in my eyes; I tasted salt on my lip. I ignored it and kept going.
I rather enjoyed the work -- it was like getting paid to do aerobic exercise for an hour, and also to get to handle animals, which I always like (even though we were sending them to their deaths).
During the entire hour, story plotlines about the chickens ran around in my head.
I imagined the chickens' fears as they were packed into crates; I wondered whether we were separating family members, and what the chickens who were in the far end of the warehouse thought about all the noise and commotion on our end. I also thought to myself that if the chickens weren't so docile -- if they decided to revolt en masse -- there would be no way we could finish crating them up. But they didn't. They just calmly squatted in the mulch until we grabbed them.
Before I knew it, we were done. I looked around and couldn't believe that we were halfway down the huge room, and that behind us the entire floor was empty.
Out in the air, away from the stench of chicken and chicken poop, I noticed a few chickens had had accidents on my sweatshirt and torn, old jeans. Yuck. We washed up at a big sink and then were led into a makeshift kitchen area where a table had been set up with drinks, a bowl of muesli and yogurt, a home-made chocolate quick bread, a bowl of clementines, cookies and rolls and butter. I had eaten a pretty big dinner in anticipation of the work so I just peeled a clementine and listened to everyone talking in Swiss German.
The "Chicken Mother" -- a rather young woman -- invited me to come again to crate up the remaining 5,000 chickens, and to bring my friend if she still wanted to come with me. Then the lady had us each sign a piece of paper and handed us a 100-Franc bill. It was about 1:15 a.m. when I drove home.
Boxing up 5,000 chickens had only taken 60 minutes.
That was my first-ever farm work experience, and I have to say it was pretty interesting and fun. It's a great workout; it only takes an hour and, fortunately, I am a night owl, so doing it at midnight is not a problem for me.
And, I will never look at that package of chicken breasts in the store the same way again.
