Writing Competency Test Going to Essay

Total Length: 1109 words ( 4 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 3

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Take the example of the chicken -- a staple in the American diet and a familiar barnyard creature for children everywhere. Like Audubon, it is easy for us to fall into the attitude that the chicken is simply too ubiquitous, too entrenched in our daily lives to be threatened by our greed. Even if we protect its numbers, however, we have come very close to taking away from the chicken anything resembling its natural life. They are now born and raised in commercial farms, allowed little room to move, and force-fed antibiotics and far too much food in hopes of fattening them. What we are creating is not a chicken, but a cog in the economic wheel and a line in the bank ledger. But there are some people recently who recognize this, and who are bucking the system.

In an article in the New Yorker, Susan Orlean describes the burgeoning trend of backyard chicken flocks. After Martha Stewart published a romanticized image of herself tending her home chicken flock, more and more urban and suburban residents have been entranced by the simple, nostalgic pleasures of scattering feed and gathering eggs; Orlean herself even became a chicken owner (27). As one of her mystified neighbors noted, "Chickens are the new hot pet, I guess" (Ibid).
Unfortunately, everything hot eventually cools, and the heightened respect and attention that chickens are receiving now could easily be abandoned as the trendiness of it fades.

In the end, the only real way to protect bird populations is to fundamentally change the way we view them. We need to become like John Muir, who saw birds as "God's feathered people" (qtd. In Ecotopia). If we can forge a personal connection to birds that outlasts our Sesame Street dreams and the latest urban trend towards "rural chic," then perhaps we will be able to preserve these populations at the height of their strength and beauty instead of grieving their permanent loss.

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"Writing Competency Test Going To", 26 May 2010, Accessed.21 May. 2025,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/writing-competency-test-going-10754