An ordinary “tip run” for a pair of Aussies has ended in an “absolutely disgusting” discovery after a woman and her partner managed to hear a distressing noise coming from inside the large, rubbish-filled bin. The faint animal noise emanating from the “massive skip” led her to uncover a “crazy” find inside a small bag, she says.
The Queensland woman was visiting a tip about an hour from McKay when she ultimately found two live chicks nestled among the garbage in one bin, still in the process of hatching out of their eggs. She said it was “not what I thought I’d ever find” at the waste site, adding she almost dumped her rubbish on top of the fledgling chicks.
“Yesterday was crazy. Went to do a tip run when we could hear cheeping coming from the dumpster,” the woman wrote online. “We were about to throw our garbage on top of a bag with live hatching chicks in it! Of course we jumped in that massive skip bin and investigated and wow — I’m so glad we did.”
‘Cheeping’ from bag leads to ‘crazy’ dumpster find
The woman later shared the unsettling find with a dumpster diving group on social media, including a happy ending for the abandoned birds.
“One hatched in my lap on the way back home, the other needed help out of the shell … but so far we have two healthy chicks from a sealed bag in a dumpster,” she wrote.
The troubling discovery comes merely months after somebody put a live rooster inside a charity bin in Adelaide, and appears to be an example of the broader nationwide trend of people “dumping” live poultry at homes and at waste sites.
One NSW-based animal rescuer previously told Yahoo how people continually leave bagged live chickens on her lawn.
People react to ‘disgusting’ move
Responding to the woman’s post, Australians were grateful the chicks were rescued but expressed outrage they’d seemingly been “thrown out”.
“That’s actually disgusting that somebody would just throw them out,” a woman said. “I’d be reporting that to the RSPCA.”
“Oh wow, I’m over the moon these precious chicks were saved. You were meant to be there,” another said.
“You were there at the right time, I wonder if the owner thought the eggs were likely rotten (at an old or abandoned nest) — hence the bag in case they broke?” somebody else wondered.
“What bastard would throw these babies in the bin?” another, less forgiving woman, commented.
In Queensland, it is a serious offence, carrying a maximum of one year in prison, to abandon or release an animal for which you are responsible unless a person has a reasonable excuse, or legal authority to do so. Similar rules are in place in every jurisdiction around the country.
According to the woman who found the chicks, she wasn’t sure whoever dumped the eggs knew they were fertile or ready to hatch. “It’s hard to prove, sadly,” she said.
Yahoo News Australia has contacted the RSPCA with regard to increased reports of poultry dumping.
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