Who on earth does not know chicken? We are lucky that we know what chickens or birds mean, how delicious and nutritious they are. When someone talks about chicken, I cannot help myself imagine two of my favorite menus at most Chinese restaurants, Chicken with Chilies and fried chicken a la Thai.
As we are living in this very moment, the moment where we still can find birds fly over the sky, across our roof or in front of the window of our apartment balcony. The picture we should feel thankful.
Who on earth does not know chicken? They might be our son, daughter, grand children or great grand children who have no chance to get to know those creatures, let's say in 10 or 20 years to come, may God forbid.
How come they do not know about chicken at all? Because we, their ancestors, have burnt all poultry, any flying creatures or what we call now as birds, any kind of birds in this century. Chicken, birds or any kind of poultries have become our dangerous enemy ever.
I still remember when I was a kid, I was running around with my friends, on bare feet. My childhood was so wonderful that I still cherish it in my heart. One day, we were playing hide and seek, and I was trying to find a place to hide, I ran so fast that I didn't see some little chicks, like 10 day-old chicks were running between my feet.
The saddest thing was, I accidentally stepped my feet on one of those chubby chicks, when I realized, the chick was dead. I was so shocked to see what happened. I cried and took the chick, I felt the soft yellow furly motionless chick on my palm, I murmured to the chick how sorry I was.
If only I could hold on my step. God only knows I never meant to harm the cute chick, let alone kill it. That's the story of my childhood. Now, what we see, burning thousand chickens or birds seemed to be normal scene. Normal might be insufficient word to describe, actually it's a must do scene.
It has been known that birds or chickens have been the carrier of contagious virus, H5N1 avian influenza (Bird Flu), it is called. We just know that if there are suspects of bird flu in our neighborhood, all the chickens or birds around the neighborhood would be blamed for that.
The official agents will come to the suspect's home and burn all poultry they found. It seems that we have found the solution for our problem, is it final? Nope, of course not.
Have we all known that burning all birds will not settle the problem? Have we noticed that the H5N1 avian influenza was caused by the damage to ecosystem? According to information launched at WHO website, out of 113 cases confirmed to date in Indonesia, 91 have been fatal.