By Gus Saltonstall
For the fifth time since the summer of 2024, a pair of dead chickens have turned up at a Broadway median between West 89th and 92nd streets.
In each instance, the chickens were carefully laid out along the outer ring of the median.
Most recently, two chickens were found Tuesday on Election Day on the outer ring of the Broadway median at the corner of West 90th Street.
The chickens are always the same shade of white and in relatively good condition.
There are no nearby slaughterhouses in the area, and the purposeful placement of the dead animals indicates there is some sort of deliberate action taking place.
In October 2025, West Side Rag obtained video from a nearby building that appears to show a woman with a shopping cart walking out to a Broadway median at West 91st Street, around 2:30 a.m., on September 27, and placing two chickens along the outer ring.
The video zooms in on the woman at around the 55-second mark.
Following ongoing WSR investigation, video was recovered of a woman walking out to a Broadway median with a shopping cart at 2:30 a.m. and gently placing two dead chickens on its outer ring.
She then turns calmly and walks away.
Video gets better around the 1-minute mark. https://t.co/Sr8WP9Vwlm
— Gus Saltonstall (@GusSaltonstall) October 1, 2025
“I believe that it’s some kind of black magic,” the anonymous building employee wrote to the Rag at the time.
Read More:
- Video Appears to Capture Older Woman Placing Dead Chickens on UWS Broadway Median at 2:39 A.M.
- 2 Dead Chickens Again Found in the Middle of the Road on Same 3-Block UWS Stretch
- Pair of Dead Chickens Found in the Middle of the Road for 2nd Time in 3 Block UWS Stretch
- 2 Dead Chickens Found in the Middle of UWS Road
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Please put in cameras.
She’s just feeding the Coyotes
these a few blocks away then she need to take it to the park.
We wish.
Can we agree that: (a) it’s unsanitary to leave animal corpses on the road and such practices should be strongly discouraged and (b) if you’re not a vegetarian or vegan, you’re in no position to condemn, in itself, the killing of a chicken for (apparently) religious purposes? If you think it’s barbarous, take it up with the Romans.
Peripherally, there’s an interesting article in The Guardian this morning about the bogging down of plans for a lab-grown meat industry. (https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/nov/05/lab-grown-meat-save-the-world-food-revolution-climate-crisis-food-system)
No word on plans for a lab-grown sacrificial victim industry, though. Perhaps there’s a market for that in our neighborhood.
I would agree with (a) and (b), but what do ppl from Rome have to do with dead chickens?
Romans (and probably the Etruscans before them) used to divine the mood of the gods by looking at animal entrails, including those of poultry. It was called haruspicy.
In the ancient practice, what was done with the “used” poultry after their innards were “read” by the haruspex?
Were they eaten? Given to the poor to eat? Burnt as an offering?
Or perhaps laid out in parks and at street intersections, the way ours seem to be?
—
It also occurs to me that these chickens may be part of someone’s decoration project — you know, “Martha Stewart shows you how to liven up your neighborhood with attractively placed fowl” — and everyone is just getting worked up over nothing.
I can’t imagine they didn’t cook and eat them after, it was food and I don’t think they’d waste it. Even burnt offerings were eaten after.
Agree with a), disagree with b). My father was once told to buy a chicken, then spit into its mouth until he could spit no more. This was part of a ritual to remove a curse. Horrible to inflict on a bird.
Also horrible to inflict on humans!
Oh please, this is a disgusting and ugly practice. Lying them there like that is sickening and hope they can find the woman doing this. This is not about vegan or not!
• The “Ebó” (Cleansing or Offering): When a practitioner needs to remove heavy illness, severe bad luck, or a perceived curse from an individual, a cleansing ritual (ebó) is performed. The white chickens are used to absorb the negative energy.
• Why White Birds? White is universally the color of purity, clarity, health, and peace in these traditions (often associated with the Orisha Obatala). Using healthy white birds signifies a desire for cleansing, healing, or calming a chaotic situation.
• Why Leave Them Visibly? The ritual specifically dictates that the offering or the absorbed negativity must be left at a “crossroads” so the spirits can claim it, or so the negative energy is dispersed away from the home. It is placed with extreme care and respect because it is treated as a formal, sacred transaction with the spirit world, not trash.
Given the infrequency of the incidents and the presence of the supernatural…Let it be.
The ritual use of chickens as a form of religious sacrifice or atonement occurs in several major cultural and religious traditions, the largest of which are Kapparot in Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities, and ritual sacrifice within Afro-Caribbean religions such as Santería.
Are you saying we can’t condemn these? Or just when it’s done on the street?
As a vegetarian, I don’t agree with eating chickens or using them for Kapparot, However, chickens used for Kapparot are killed the same way as any other kosher chickens and then donated to charity to feed the poor. This is hardly comparable to whatever is going on here.
Yes, I am saying that if you eat chicken for pleasure, which involves not only killing them, but (in most cases) raising them in conditions indistinguishable from torture camps, you are not in a good ethical position to condemn killing animals in religious rites, per se. One could even argue that it’s more ethically defensible to kill an animal to please one’s god than to please one’s palate.
(I eat chicken, I’m an atheist, I’m just realistic about the implications.)
thank you for your thoughtful answer, Sarah.
nah man it’s wasteful to kill a chicken and not have it be eaten
Santeria? Melissa Mark-Viverito allegedly put a curse on her rival!
https://nypost.com/2014/01/04/loser-pol-rival-mark-viverito-put-a-curse-on-me/
Actually, we cannot agree to that. There’s a world of difference between killing an animal to eat it, and killing it and tossing it’s body in the street because words in a book, or a voice in your head told you to do so.
Vegan here. Killing is killing. Would you like being killed either for someone’s meal or someone’s sacrificial ritual?
Do you think it matters to the bird why it’s killed?
Was hoping to stem the tide of not-so-covertly-racist “ewww, look at these gross primitive practices of the savages” comments, but, oh well, the usual UWS crowd must represent, I guess.
Huge difference! Agree.
We don’t do rational here.
This is what “livable streets” look like!
Yes. Very livable with dog pee and poop. Cigarette butts. Overflowing garbage bins — how about considering NOT take-out everyday?
Someone used to leave dead chickens in Central Park. We thought it was Santaria ritual of some sort.
Nothing is wrong with keeping the Lwa on your good side.
Hope our new elected officials will handle this. Blakeman would have done something about it PRONTO!
“I only have two questions.”
Slowly puts on sunglasses.
“Regular, or crispy?”
This is absolutely disgusting and I don’t care who’s doing it but it needs to stop.
Not funny. Killing any sort of animal and doing this is disturbing to say the least. A snide sarcastic remark about crossing the road shows a lack of civility and idiocy that is really a bridge too far. Low-end mentality.
I moved to the city in 1981. On the site of the under-construction, upscale “The Henry” on the corner of 88th and Amsterdam, I would see, once in a while, two dead chickens in the waste receptacle on the corner. There was a santeria altar in the nearly deserted building once at the site, and I always assumed the chickens had been executed in a religious rite there.
Leave those alone. I don’t want that juju on me or my family. Also, I would avoid those medians at all costs.
Maybe it was an offering to the gods of the Democrats. If so, it worked. 😉
I saw a dead chicken about two years ago on the traffic island at Broadway and 70th Street. It can’t be legal to keep chickens in the City (but would our current District Attorney prosecute such a crime?). The activity related to chickens is certainly disturbing.
You guys are thinking about this all wrong. This is actually really good for property values in the neighborhood. The Dark Lord is now looking over us all…
“Deliver us Lord of Shadow, from the tyranny of peace and the deceit of mercy.
Grant us the fire of discord and let the trumpets of ruin sound upon the mountaintops.
And let the ashes of the righteous cover the Earth.”
Too much??:)
Wasting chicken?!!?
In this economy!!??