It has happened again.

I've just hung up from Animal Care and Control in Manhattan, who picked up 17 newly-hatched chicks found in a cardboard box on the corner of 170th St on Saturday morning.

They will be delivered here this afternoon.

I'd have to check our records, but this will be the 9th or 10th group of baby animals we've taken after they've been dumped in the city. (The last group that was scheduled to come somehow wound up at Farm Sanctuary instead. They were dyed flourescent blues, purples, pinks and greens--it was Easter.)

This crass discarding of animals as if they were garbage (they're usually just left in a box on a street corner, though we took one group actually found in a dumpster) happens in two situations:

1. Elementary school teachers have "egg-hatching" projects for their students. Remember those from your school days, grown ups? The kids keep the eggs warm, turn them, learn about chicken reproduction, but once the eggs hatch, far too many teachers throw them away.

Tremendous irony here, wouldn't you say: teaching ten-year-olds about caring and compassion and then throwing away, literally, the young beings for whom your students have cared? Can you imagine the children's reaction if they found out?

Egg-hatching really needs to be removed from the curriculum--and the "happy ending"--students are told that the chickens are going away to a farm to live--needs to be exposed. If there is a parent group out there as incensed about this as we are, we'd be happy to work with you. This change will happen district by district.

2. Another time this occurs is at Easter. Parents get two rabbits for their two children, don't have the rabbits spayed or neutered, and suddenly have 8 or 10 on their hands. We've taken baby rabbits from a dumpster in Queens, the streets in Park Slope, the streets of Manhattan, a parking lot on Staten Island.

Again, I find the irony here SO disturbing. In this case PARENTS purchase animals presumably to teach caring and compassion, then THROW THE ANIMALS AWAY? I'd love to know what they tell their kids!!

We'll post a You Tube video next week.