PETA Announces Award To Chicken-Saving Police Officer

OSSINING, NY — Officer Patrick McGovern kept a shed fire from becoming a conflagration — and picked up a chicken on his way out. He got a lot of grief from his fellow officers for the above-and-beyond.

Seriously, he got the propane tanks. But his bodycam footage has gone viral, and department officials said they were mulling over whether to put in for a life-saving award.

Now the radical animal-rights group PETA has announced it's giving Ossining a Compassionate Police Department Award.

Not only did McGovern rescue the chicken, but the video shows him kindly reassuring the hen as he gently catches her and carries her away from danger, PETA officials pointed out.

(Editor's Note: the audio shows him overcome by something between a giggle and a wheeze more than once.)

"Officer McGovern didn't hesitate when he saw that this gentle chicken was in danger," said PETA Vice President Colleen O'Brien in a press release. "PETA hopes this story will encourage everyone to see these birds as sensitive living beings who deserve as much compassion and care as dogs and cats do."

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way"—notes that chickens have complex social structures and individual personalities and that their communication system includes more than 30 types of vocalizations.

You can hear some of that vocalization in the police department's video as well as McGovern's laugh.

SEE: Fearless Rescue Of Feathered Friend - WATCH And LISTEN

Although chickens feel pain and fear just as dogs, cats, and humans do, not a single federal law protects them from abuse, PETA officials said.

They're sending the Ossining Police Department a framed certificate, a letter of congratulations, "and a box of delicious vegan cookies."

PHOTO/ Ossining Police Department

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