![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Bird Brain chicken was one of hundreds of hens across the country trained to sit in a box and peck at a flashing light for a food pellet in an arcade game rigged to rid rubes of their quarters. PETA wasn’t founded until 1980, and anyone could own an animal and teach it to do their bidding for financial gain. Whether she actually called the manager or not made no difference. And then she’d march us through the warehouse and out to the chilly, dank beach. “I’m going to call the manager and file a complaint,” she fumed each time she took us to Edgewater. My mother, outraged by the chicken’s imprisonment in a tiny workplace, forbade me and my siblings to get within six feet of the game. But I knew this from outside observation only. The hen always went first, guaranteed by the electronic circuitry within the game to win the match, or tie, leaving players devoid of their spare change and self-esteem. Only then did she rouse herself and bend to peck a hidden lever in her box, illuminating a bright red X or O. She had white feathers and a red comb, and she was listless enough that onlookers at Edgewater Packing Company-a Monterey, California, warehouse turned tourist trap-believed she was a statue until they dropped a quarter into the slot beneath her window and activated a Tic-Tac-Toe game on the wall beside her. The chicken stood inside a two-foot-square box with a smudged glass window, under a sign that read “Bird Brain” in a jaunty yellow font. ![]()
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