Chook Me!

Preventing inmate escape by executing escapees in front of the rest?

My friend McAngus is a poultry farmer in the Yorkshire Dales and he has had serious problems with chickens escaping the coop. Basically, these chickens are smuggling small stones back into the coop after their morning exercise (usually hidden in their feathers), and then using these stones to hack away at the locks on the cages in the dead of night .. and some of them are also digging tunnels which they then cover over with straw and excrement. They tend to flee up into the hills in small groups and McAngus thinks a small community may be building up there. Now, McAngus has already instituted full cavity searches for all poultry returning from the yard - two strong lads (Gottfried and Ingaborger) pat down every chicken that passes through the door - but I've been telling him it just isn't good enough. We want to fit an alarm system around the farmyard so that every time a chicken makes a run for it they'll break a laser beam, and a klaxon will start shrieking along with flashing red lights all around the perimeter. Then Gottfried can man a searchlight and start shinning it at all the hayricks.. and Ingerborger can sit in a makeshift watchtower and take potshots at the legs of fleeing birds with a heavy double-gauge elephant gun. It seems obvious that if these escapes (which are costing McAngus considerable sums of money) are ever to cease - an example will have to be made.. and here is where I need your help. These birds are being used for food anyway - is it unethical to stage an execution in front of all its fellows - to hang it while making it clear to them that this is the penalty for attempted escape? McAngus worries that if he doesn't act soon, the chickens in the hills will swarm down on the farm and release all the poultry - and he'll be ruined

Public Comments

1. It must have taken you quite some time to type this lot out. Well done. As the chickens are all inevitably due for execution in any event, it seems to me unlikely to affect their escape bids by executing them earlier than anticipated. Unless Angus is considering keeping them all as pets?
2. Depends if McAngus is republican, he'll do it in front of the eggs. That way the lesson will last longer. Because to him an egg is a chicken.
3. I think that public executions will have the opposite of the intended effect. The chickens know they're going to die anyway, they may choose to make a statement and take some control over their lives by determining the method in which they are killed. If I were in their position I would prefer to die in such a manner that my corpse could never be sold for food, such as by being blown apart by elephant gun.
4. Electrify the fence surrounding the chicken yard. Then instead of the chickens escaping, McAngus will have fried chicken! As for executing the chickens, better not. The United Nations frowns on executing juveniles...but there is no problem if the chickens "suicide" on an electric fence! Good luck and God bless!