Here's a good news story to start the new year from a local television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Guardian has video.
MILWAUKEE – A Wisconsin couple says clucks, not fire trucks, helped them escape a blaze at their home.
Dennis Murawska, 59, said a pet chicken named Cluck Cluck woke his wife Susan Cotey, 52, with loud clucking from its cage in the basement two floors below about 6:15 a.m. Thursday. The couple's two cats also were running around the main floor.
Murawska said he had been half awake but didn't know about the fire because the smoke alarms hadn't gone off. He realized something was wrong when his wife got up.
"The chicken gets quite vocal when she gets excited," he said.
Cluck Cluck came from a nearby farm in Alma Center, about 135 miles east of Minneapolis, Murawska said. When the chicken began wandering over to his house, his neighbor said he could kill it because it wasn't producing any eggs. But Murawska felt sorry for Cluck Cluck because she had a mutated foot and decided to keep her. He fed the bird and built a coop, and then his wife let Cluck Cluck into the basement on cold nights.
"I spent way more money than I ever should've," Murawska said by telephone. "I guess it paid off."
The couple escaped, and firefighters found the chicken in its cage and one of the cats alive in the basement. Another cat hasn't been found and is presumed dead, Murawska said. The couple and their surviving cat checked into a Black River Falls hotel, while Cluck Cluck is staying with the neighbor who used to own her.
Alma Center Fire Chief Jeff Gaede said the fire started in the attic of the attached garage and was not suspicious. The house was a total loss, but it could have been worse -- if not for the chicken.
"We are used to hearing about a dog or cat or something, but we never heard of a chicken waking up a resident for a fire," Gaede said. "That's pretty amazing."
United Poultry Concerns points out that industrial chickens don't have adequate protection from fire:
MILWAUKEE – A Wisconsin couple says clucks, not fire trucks, helped them escape a blaze at their home.
Dennis Murawska, 59, said a pet chicken named Cluck Cluck woke his wife Susan Cotey, 52, with loud clucking from its cage in the basement two floors below about 6:15 a.m. Thursday. The couple's two cats also were running around the main floor.
Murawska said he had been half awake but didn't know about the fire because the smoke alarms hadn't gone off. He realized something was wrong when his wife got up.
"The chicken gets quite vocal when she gets excited," he said.
Cluck Cluck came from a nearby farm in Alma Center, about 135 miles east of Minneapolis, Murawska said. When the chicken began wandering over to his house, his neighbor said he could kill it because it wasn't producing any eggs. But Murawska felt sorry for Cluck Cluck because she had a mutated foot and decided to keep her. He fed the bird and built a coop, and then his wife let Cluck Cluck into the basement on cold nights.
"I spent way more money than I ever should've," Murawska said by telephone. "I guess it paid off."
The couple escaped, and firefighters found the chicken in its cage and one of the cats alive in the basement. Another cat hasn't been found and is presumed dead, Murawska said. The couple and their surviving cat checked into a Black River Falls hotel, while Cluck Cluck is staying with the neighbor who used to own her.
Alma Center Fire Chief Jeff Gaede said the fire started in the attic of the attached garage and was not suspicious. The house was a total loss, but it could have been worse -- if not for the chicken.
"We are used to hearing about a dog or cat or something, but we never heard of a chicken waking up a resident for a fire," Gaede said. "That's pretty amazing."
United Poultry Concerns points out that industrial chickens don't have adequate protection from fire:
The story of Cluck Cluck, a hen whose loud cries alerted her grateful family to a fire in their Wisconsin home on December 28, thus enabling them to escape, has resounded around the world. Reporters love this story, and rightly so! But Cluck Cluck’s Heroism with its Happy Ending and shower of praise also echoes the cries of tens of millions of chickens and turkeys on farms throughout the United States whose clamor upon sensing a fire in their houses is totally ignored by their owners, who refuse to install even minimal fire protection equipment, claiming it would cost too much. They prefer to let the birds burn alive and collect the insurance and taxpayer reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On Dec. 20, 2012, 25,000 turkeys burned to death on a farm in Virginia. Last May, 500,000 hens burned to death on a farm in Colorado. Last June, 14,000 turkeys burned to death – 7,000 in North Carolina and 7,000 in Minnesota.
When we learned in July 2012 that the National Fire Protection Association, “the authority on fire, electrical, and building safety,” had proposed an amendment requiring all newly-constructed farmed animal housing facilities to be equipped with sprinklers and smoke control systems, and that the agribusiness lobbies had successfully joined forces to defeat the proposal, we filed our own Appeal and gave testimony at the NFPA’s Meeting on the proposal on August 7 in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Though the agribusiness lobby won the first round, we will continue to fight for a NFPA provision mandating that fire protection equipment be installed in all farmed animal housing facilities. Nothing shows more starkly their total lack of compassion and accountability than the refusal of farmers and farming corporations to install basic fire protection equipment in the buildings they trap their animals in. If the alarm cries of one single hen could be heard two floors from where the Wisconsin family lay sleeping, imagine the sound of many thousands of birds trapped in their cells, and nobody listening as they scream, burn, and suffocate to death together.
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