Her name is Gochigla. It's sort of a joke. Technically, she is a chicken. Or, at least that's the closest thing to what she is genetically. But you wouldn't know to look at her. She's a strange creature, genetically modify for this effect. Like just the head of a chicken attached to a many-meters long fat wormlike snakelike body; and from this body, stubby wings grow. Hundreds of them, sometimes over a thousand, protruding from every available wriggling space, sticking out in every direction. Featherless, moderately meaty chicken wings. And twice per day, the machine comes through. The machine grabs these wings in pinchers and plucks them all off, only so new ones can begin growing back with astonishing speed for such a thing.

Gochigla doesn't feel much of the pain. To prevent inconvenient writhing, they keep her drugged up, so she feels close to nothing at all. A sleek black tube comes from some other place to surround her beak and cover her face, and through this tube comes and unending supply of drugs to keep her quiet, drugs to keep her living, and pasty flavorless nutrients to propel the growth of those precious wings. A bigger tube surrounds her. It is her entire world.

She is kept in a place unknown to all but very few, in a state where laws are very, very lax about such things. In similar tubes under similar wing-plucking machines are dozens and dozens of Gochigla's similarly engineered sisters, though she is the biggest of them all, and so is prized for growing the most wings.

So when you eat that basket of chicken wings, do give a thought and a nod, to Gochigla, and her sisters.



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For THE IRON NODER CHALLENGE: 9 FAST 9 FERROUS; inspired by some other things read recently here.

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