F.R.I.E.N.D. Animal Rescue

24th June.

Over the fund raiser weekend someone delivered a group of tiny chicks to us that we’d agreed to take for a mate in the Midlands. Another school ‘educational’ tool. Six tiny fluffy little babies with no mother to teach or protect them, they sat, frightened, in the back of a huge cat carrier. It was, of course, the safest way of transporting them but they looked lost, helpless and utterly alone in their baby world.

I was at Seven Oaks market one cold, Monday, Spring morning. The market was, to put it politely, an old fashioned affair. We didn’t know that the place was drawing its last breaths as a market with plans afoot to pull it down and develop the sight. That might account in part for the lack of investment in the place but it did attract a particular type of person and they seemed to like the ‘rustic’ approach.

One side of the market was lined with small, often broken cages which held pretty well anything that would fit in the door. Usually fowl on one side and rabbits the other. It was a really strange old mix with little fluffy bunnies intended for the pet trade through to huge New Zealand white rabbits.
There was a particularly nasty character that used to put them into the sale, on being approached by a customer he’d remove a requested rabbit, walk round the back of the building only to reappear swinging its hot, lifeless body by the back legs. A trickle of blood usually dripped starkly, red on white, from the poor creatures nose.

I remember buying a rabbit from there on one occasion and when I went to collect her she had given birth on the cold, bare, steel floor of the cage in full view of all lookers. No dignity and privacy for that poor lady. No comfort or safety, no nest. Her breast tissue was like half tennis balls of pus stuffed under the skin, so infected as to render her incapable of feeding her babies. They were hand reared – I seem to recall that she died.

Brutality was part of what Seven Oaks market was. It was issued with its Trading Standards Officer who was meant to control such things but his heart really wasn’t in it and the only time he’d put down his tea and come out the office was when we complained.

It was quite common practice in those days for men with restaurants to go to the market and buy cockerels to stew up. They were big old birds and often no more than pennies each so they’d stuff them into boxes and dispatch them at home ready for dinner that night. Often these guys would drive big, flash, new cars that must have cost fortunes and they were very proud of the shiny beasts. No status in kindness and compassion but instead buffed metal and chrome.
That day I’d watched this well dressed man collect his boxes of cockerels and disappear out the gate, his brand new Mercedes sitting by the curb a few feet away. He slid the various boxes onto the back seat and shut the door, his job done, he went to chat with his mates.
I went back to check on the birds about ten minutes later only to find myself laughing out loud. He must have had about fifteen cockerels in the boxes all of which were very large and all of which had escaped into his beautiful car.
One bird was was perched on the steering wheel, crowing. Several were along the top of the front seats some perched on the back. The rest were sitting on the seats themselves. All of theme were filthy and the interior of the car was splattered with chicken diarrhoea. It was everywhere. I know that it wasn’t going to save their lives as nothing could do that but it was such a beautiful revenge that I couldn’t help but applaud them for trying.

So, going back the original reason for telling the story of that dreadful place and what it had to do with the chicks looking lost in the cat carrier.

To see calves at Seven Oaks was normal. Sometimes there’d be loads of them and sometimes just be a few. They went, almost exclusively to slaughter. The knackerman got £15 a piece for the poor little souls, usually about eight days old and totally defenceless.

One day I was driving out of the market and I had to pull round the slaughterman’s vehicle. The ramp was down and my eyes flicked up to see inside as I tried to pass. There tied up in the back of the lorry was one solitary calf. It was tiny, not much different in size to a skinny Labrador dog. The baby was tethered but made no effort to move, overwhelmed by what was happening, waiting for its mother to come and get it and make everything all right. But no mummy for that little baby.
It looked at me and I couldn’t save it.
I drove on.
I have never forgiven myself for that.

It reminded me of an image that has never left me from many, many years ago.