DETAILS, DETAILS:

Corrections (LA Times)

Activist — An article in Monday's Section A included incorrect information about animal rights activist Virgil Butler. It said that Butler took part in the U.S. invasion of Panama, where he recalled killing enemy soldiers, but the Army has no record of his service. The article stated that Butler shot a man to death in the parking lot of a bar and went to prison for manslaughter. In fact, he was convicted of felony burglary, and the shooting could not be confirmed. The article said Butler killed 80,000 birds a shift at a Tyson poultry plant. He did not slaughter every chicken personally but was part of a nine-person team.

It's worthwhile noting that these things are not incidental to the story, but the very hook upon which the author hangs it, A Killing Floor Chronicle: A down-and-out former poultry worker's online memoirs of his gruesome job have electrified animal-rights activists worldwide. (Stephanie Simon, December 8, 2003, LA Times)

PINE RIDGE, Ark. — In his dim trailer in the pines, Virgil Butler writes of killing.

He once shot a man to death in the parking lot of a bar. He served in the American invasion of Panama and recalled killing enemy soldiers at close range. That is not the violence that drives him to his keyboard.

He is haunted, instead, by the nine years he made his way in the world by slaughtering chickens.
In the chilled dark of a Tyson processing plant, Butler killed 80,000 birds a shift. He snapped their legs into shackles so they hung upside down. He slit their throats. Every two seconds, another chicken came at him down the line, squawking and flapping. It was not possible, then, to think much.

But Tyson fired Butler last fall, for reasons the company won't specify. He has time now to think. The man he shot at the bar — that was self-defense. The soldiers he killed — that was war. It's the birds that shadow his sleep. He sits cross-legged on his sagging bed and pulls the keyboard to his lap. "There is blood everywhere…. It's just you and the dying chickens…. You are ashamed to tell others what you do at night while they are asleep in their beds."

Butler writes for hours each day. His words have electrified animal-rights activists around the globe.

Remove the lies and insert the truth and what's left? Dead chickens and very strange dude.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 13, 2003 1:37 PM