One million chickens died in a fire over the weekend. One million chickens. Detective Ericson was sent to investigate the cause. One million chickens - it seemed to boggle the mind. One million chickens all in the same place, all at the same time, perishing in a fire. 

And that was only half the farm. Four barns had caught ablaze around 1:30AM Saturday morning. Four of a total eight. That’s 2 million chickens in total. Half now dead. It was the fourth largest farm in the country. The hens were farmed for two years. Chickens live for eight, but only lay for two. After that they’re no longer needed. 

One million chickens. Ericson’s surprise betrayed his naivety. This was not an unusually high number and nobody in the town blinked at the figure. When he had met the owner of the plant, a wiry man in a suit shirt and cropped white hair, he had seemed stressed, naturally, but not distraught. He had told the press that the loss of one million chickens was “unacceptable”. He supported the efforts of the police in their investigation, promised to cooperate, and suggested that the company would conduct their own internal investigation also. 

He had seemed stressed when Ericson had spoken to him. But he hadn’t been anywhere near the farm the night of the fire, he lived in upstate New York, and flown in on a private jet. He wasn’t going to go bankrupt or go out of business or lose any money personally from the catastrophe. He would still pay his children’s private school fees, they would still go on holiday as a family at the end of the year as planned. 

The loss of one million chickens was a setback, but not a catastrophe. 

When Ericson spoke to the floor manager, it had been a different story. This man was stocky, with thick arms like legs of ham, an auburn beard, dark eyes. He had been in charge of the farm that night. In anyone bore the brunt of the responsibility for the accident it was, unfortunately, him. Perhaps this was why, unlike the owner of the farm, this man was considerably withdrawn. When they spoke he looked into the middle distance. It was as though the essential substance of his being had evaporated and left only the outward facing shell. 

What did one million dead chickens look like? What did it smell like? What had it sounded like? The floor manager had said that the blaze had been caused by what he suspected was faulty wiring in the heat lamps. The farm relied on enormously powerful heat lamps to assist in temperature control and it was not unheard of for the wiring to cause fires if not checked regularly. Though he had no seen it happen, that night he had heard a loud bang, and then the fire. 

What was the difference between one dead chicken and one million dead chickens? Throughout his life Ericson had never felt any great sympathy for chickens. He did not consider them smart creatures. Indeed on the hierarchy of animals they were generally accepted to be amongst the dumbest. And yet in light of the fire the difference between one dead chicken and million dead chickens seemed almost arbitrary. 

Did anybody feel guilty? When Ericson spoke to the townspeople in the coffee shops and the post office, people expressed their shock with resigned sighs. Was there a sense of embarrassment in those sighs? A sense of sheepish guilt? 

Or was this projection. It wasn’t as though the farm was any great secret of course. It was a fact of life - no more or less remarkable than the auto repair shop. Had the chickens suffered in the fire? Could the devastation been avoided? Could the chickens have been freed? Would that have been preferable? One million chickens, descending on the town. 

For these chickens, who - after laying their eggs - were gassed with CO2 and buried in landfill - this death was no different. In reality, they died in much the same way. Their fate was delivered only a little sooner than usual. This death was only marginally more painful, from certain perspectives it was probably more dignified. 

Perhaps this was why Ericson was only a little surprised when three weeks later it was revealed that the fire had not been an accident. They had found the floor manager, dead from self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had confessed in a note to starting the blaze, but he had left no reason. Nor had he left a reason for the subsequent self-killing. 

Perhaps he had thought the police were on his tail. That his time was up. Well, sooner or later. If this was the case, then the act had been premature. No one, not Ericson, nor his colleagues, nor the CEO, had suspected him in the slightest. 

They had all believed the story about the faulty wiring. There was no point, it had seemed, to suspect anything else.