What a wonderful Story..
Plucky chicken gets expressway rescue
Kindly cab driver saves farm fowl from becoming road kill
By Cindy Wolff (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Friday, May 1, 2009
Forget why it crossed the road, Yellow Cab driver Charlie Yonkers just wanted to get the chicken out of the road.
Yonkers spotted the white chicken, feathers missing, red comb askew, about 7 a.m. Wednesday on his way to take a passenger to the airport.
"A chicken! On the highway!"
The chicken hunkered against the concrete shoulder of Interstate 55, just south of where it changes from Riverside Drive. Semi-tractor trailers and cars roared by inches from the bird. A few feathers flew.
Maybe the chicken was in a truck on its way to the slaughterhouse, a certain death, when fate intervened, Yonkers thought. He couldn't let it suffer.
He took time out from his job and parked on the shoulder Wednesday, waiting for a lull in traffic
to make a run at the bird.
"It took off like greased lightning," said Yonkers, who lives in Southaven with his wife, Margaret, and some stray cats they rescued.
He drove by the spot Thursday. The chicken was still there.
He hoped a bad night's sleep and lack of food would make the bird catchable by a slightly overweight 57-year-old who listens to Hall and Oates' greatest hits in his cab.
Two cars saw the action and slowed down, giving Yonkers a window to snag the fowl. He hugged it to his chest, petted it and looked at its injuries.
"It's suffered a lot out here, with all this noise, unable to move all night," Yonkers said as he held the bird with one hand and drove with the other. "He deserves a reprieve and a rest at the Shady Grove."
He swerved his cab into a Wendy's, asked the drive-through cashier for a piece of bread to feed a starving chicken. She returned with a warm bun. No charge.
The bird pecked at the bread.
"That's a good boy," Yonkers said as he stroked the chicken under its neck.
Yonkers took him to the zoo to see if the chicken could live a fairytale life at the Once Upon a Farm exhibit.
Zoo veterinarian Mike Douglass put the chicken in a quarantine area with some hay and feed. The zoo normally doesn't accept animals from the public, but it was hard to resist a cab driver and a chicken with a reporter and photographer in tow.
Douglass agreed to let it spend a few days in an isolation stall so Yonkers could find it a home.
Yonkers eats chicken, loves fried chicken. But he believes this one has been through too much and deserves a chance at a long life, pecking at grain, scratching the ground instead of becoming a meal.
Plucky chicken gets expressway rescue
Kindly cab driver saves farm fowl from becoming road kill
By Cindy Wolff (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Friday, May 1, 2009
Forget why it crossed the road, Yellow Cab driver Charlie Yonkers just wanted to get the chicken out of the road.
Yonkers spotted the white chicken, feathers missing, red comb askew, about 7 a.m. Wednesday on his way to take a passenger to the airport.
"A chicken! On the highway!"
The chicken hunkered against the concrete shoulder of Interstate 55, just south of where it changes from Riverside Drive. Semi-tractor trailers and cars roared by inches from the bird. A few feathers flew.
Maybe the chicken was in a truck on its way to the slaughterhouse, a certain death, when fate intervened, Yonkers thought. He couldn't let it suffer.
He took time out from his job and parked on the shoulder Wednesday, waiting for a lull in traffic
to make a run at the bird.
"It took off like greased lightning," said Yonkers, who lives in Southaven with his wife, Margaret, and some stray cats they rescued.
He drove by the spot Thursday. The chicken was still there.
He hoped a bad night's sleep and lack of food would make the bird catchable by a slightly overweight 57-year-old who listens to Hall and Oates' greatest hits in his cab.
Two cars saw the action and slowed down, giving Yonkers a window to snag the fowl. He hugged it to his chest, petted it and looked at its injuries.
"It's suffered a lot out here, with all this noise, unable to move all night," Yonkers said as he held the bird with one hand and drove with the other. "He deserves a reprieve and a rest at the Shady Grove."
He swerved his cab into a Wendy's, asked the drive-through cashier for a piece of bread to feed a starving chicken. She returned with a warm bun. No charge.
The bird pecked at the bread.
"That's a good boy," Yonkers said as he stroked the chicken under its neck.
Yonkers took him to the zoo to see if the chicken could live a fairytale life at the Once Upon a Farm exhibit.
Zoo veterinarian Mike Douglass put the chicken in a quarantine area with some hay and feed. The zoo normally doesn't accept animals from the public, but it was hard to resist a cab driver and a chicken with a reporter and photographer in tow.
Douglass agreed to let it spend a few days in an isolation stall so Yonkers could find it a home.
Yonkers eats chicken, loves fried chicken. But he believes this one has been through too much and deserves a chance at a long life, pecking at grain, scratching the ground instead of becoming a meal.
