ASPCA investigating Kapparot run 'afowl'

Someone got lots of atoning to do!

Times Herald-Record :

..Animal rescue officials believe a dozen crowded crates of starving chickens discovered Sunday in an empty Coney Island lot were unused leftovers that had been scheduled for slaughter as part of an unusual religious ceremony.
The atonement ceremony, called "kapparot," is...
It wasn't the practice itself that caught the attention of the Manhattan ASPCA last weekend – it was the discovery of the dying and dead broilers that eventually sent the chickens north to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary.
Joe Pentangelo, a special agent for the Manhattan ASPCA, said yesterday that an investigation was continuing into who was responsible for leaving the chickens behind. No arrests have been made, he said.
Most of the bedeviled broilers escaped their fate a second time Sunday, even though the ASPCA is best suited to saving cats and dogs, not squadrons of chickens.
But before that could happen, an ASPCA official reached out to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, which agreed to accept and care for the starving and dehydrated creatures.
Two vanloads of bedraggled broilers arrived at the sanctuary's 100-acre spread on Monday. A warm corner of a barn was the flock's first taste of freedom, according to Kathy Stevens, director of CAS.
At least a dozen of the new arrivals didn't survive the trip, she said. But by yesterday, the vast majority were recovering nicely, hunkering under heat lamps and gorging themselves on high-octane feed and the equivalent of chicken Gatorade...