So I work as a cashier in a farm store that also happens to sell live chicks. They are normally a few weeks old, still fluffy and cute.

The chicks are kept in these reasonably sized cow troughs on the ground. They are like 2.5ft tall. Fairly easy to reach into. We normally have 10-15 chicks in each, but they get sold quickly. We have several cow troughs with different breeds of chicks. They each have a nice sized water bowl and food bowl. They have a heat lamp in one end and the other end is left open, so they don’t get overheated. We have signs in bold print that read “DO NOT TOUCH OR PICK UP CHICKS, ASK AN EMPLOYEE FOR ASSISTANCE.” We also have an employee in that department that checks on the chicks every 15-30 minutes. This is all relevant later.

Anyways, today I was at the register and animal control came in. This was odd, as we normally never have problems with pets (customers can bring pets in, as long as they are on leashes. Side note: I’ve seen horses come in, sheep, a lama, a fawn, some guy brought in a peacock once).

One of the control officers came up to me, as I work at the service desk, and asked me where the pet department is. I directed him in the right direction and off he went.

Next thing I know, cops are pulling up in front of the store with the lights on. They head towards the pet department and come back with some girl in hand cuffs. She’s screaming all kinds of stuff.

So I found out later what happened: Apparently this girl called animal control because “‘Store’ is abusing their chicks and killing them! Come now, it’s terrible!”

Animal control shows up and my manager is super confused about what’s going on. My manager follows animal control to the pet department (where the chicks are). There is this girl there yelling at the animal control officers how we are “killing the chicks” and “mistreating them!”

When looking into the cow troughs, there was no food in the bowls, most of the bowls were knocked over (some missing), several heat lamps were unplugged, and one trough had at least 2 inches of water in it. The rest of the water bowls were empty.

Chicks were going crazy peeping and flapping around. In the trough with the water, there were several dead chicks laying facedown in the water. Possibly from the chicks freaking out and climbing over each other to get out of the water, drowning the weaker chicks on the bottom...

This girl was yelling about animal abuse and how she was going to sue us for neglect. My manager was shocked and called over the employee in that department. The employee was shocked and started freaking out, saying how just 10 minutes earlier he checked on them and all was fine.

The animal control officer asks if we have cameras. My manager informed him that we just installed some last week (the pet department didn’t have any for a while).

Apparently, and this is the best part, the girls face went white.

The control officer reviewed the tapes, as his partner stands with the girl and employee. As they were watching the tapes, come to find out that the girl had thrown away the food in a trash can around the corner, knocked over the bowls herself, and proceeded to unplug the heat lamps and dump all the chicks water into one trough, effectively drowning some chicks.

Needless to say, cops were called and she was escorted out, screaming how we led her to kill them, it’s our fault, we hurt her, etc. Turns out she was a past employee (before I was there) that the company fired because she was caught stealing money and lying.

She’s facing multiple charges last I heard.