A little love for the chicks of Potsdam

I was walking the girl dogs the other day and I saw some chicks. Not sorority girls, mind you, chicks – as in baby chickens. Actually, they were pretty hefty chicks – probably teenagers – doing their chicken thing of pecking at the dirt underneath a car parked next to a house on Bay Street.

The next day on our walk there was a woman working in the garden of the house and I asked her about the chicks. “Oh, they’re still around here somewhere. But there’s a farmer coming to pick them up later today.”

She told me students in a neighboring house must have thought it would be fun to have some chicks. The fun – apparently for the students and for sure for the chicks – ended with the semester. The students moved out of the rental house and left the homeless chicks outside to fend for themselves.

Chickens are pretty good fenders in the right conditions. They thrive in the wild on the streets of Caribbean islands. They would die in the wild on the cold streets of Potsdam in May. They didn’t freeze to death, though, because the young gardener brought them all into her house a couple of nights ago when frost was forecasted.

She gave her husband the credit for bringing the cute little peckers inside and keeping them alive that night. I’ll give her credit for marrying a guy with the compassion to reach out to the homeless. Even though we are only talking about giving a roof to chickens without a coop for the night, it was still a nice thing to do. And then the couple found them a good home where they’ll have a chance to scratch out a living by becoming productive egg-laying members of society. A nice thing, part two.

I come and go with how I feel about students in my college town neighborhood. One day I got the women who live at the AGO sorority bringing me a beer while I am working in the garden – which is the kind of compassion that puts students solidly on my good list. The next day I got students doing something dumb and at least some of that good will the beer bought goes down the drain.

Releasing chicks to face the wilds of Potsdam streets and spring weather is dumb. It is also cruel. I’ll fight for a student’s right to do dumb things, because young is a legitimate time to be dumb. But there is no legitimate time to be mean. I hope the students who callously left the chicks outside to live or die learn that at some point during their walk to becoming adults.