I don't see a single leaf waving. It's probably ninety degrees at Catskill Animal Sanctuary; the air is thick and still as death. But I don't turn on my air conditioner, for quite simply, it uses too much electricity. Global warming. The earth is pleading for our help, so I'm making concessions where I can. Like turning the hot water heater on only 30 minutes before my shower. Like pooling my errands so I drive less. Like going without air conditioning when I want it. Lessen the footprint. I'm trying.

The animals, after all, don't have air conditioning. They have shade, sure, but on days like this they'd love to be standing right in front of that machine that magically takes hot air and turns it frigid. (For all I understand about how air conditioning works, it might as well be created by David Copperfield or Penn and Teller.)

Today, we all sweat. I sweat at my computer, shedding first my shorts and then my shirt as I hope against hope that no stranger appears in my doorway (as they often do.) Quelle suprise! I hear myself rationalizing why a "director" is working in her underwear...

Down at the barn, meanwhile, the pigs loll in the mudbaths we make for them under the willow trees, and grunt with glee when, as they leave their pasture to come to the barn for nighttime, Lorraine sprays each of them with cool water from the hose.

The sheep, recently shorn but nonetheless trapped inside their dense coats, pant heavily. We wonder if we'll need to hose them down, too. The horses and cows find the shade and stay still; the poor broiler hens struggle.

Chickens, you see, aren't supposed to weigh 15 pounds. But those that miraculously escape slaughter DO weigh that much, sometimes more. Agribusiness has created Frankenbirds--chickens that grow at freakishly fast rates (greater profits for the producer) yet have such high death rates that agribusiness itself has created the term "flip-over syndrome" because it finds so many young chickens lying on their backs, feet pointed skyward, dead from violent heart attacks because their hearts simply can't take the rapid growth.

Yet we continue to eat them. Tortured birds, caged pigs, terrorized cows. Under agribusiness, the tiniest concessions to their well-being are long gone. These animals are commodities, period. It doesn't matter that they suffer mightily. It doesn't matter that they are so very much like us, or that pain is pain and suffering is suffering whether it is inflicted to a human or a dog or a chicken. It feels the same, no matter what one's species.

So just like the 500-pound man is having a harder time on this hot humid day than I am, so are our poor chickens. They're gasping for air.