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There was one small, white rooster whose head was dyed pink, running terrified along the beach. Mohammad Yaseen next found a speckled hen with its talons cut off in a box filled with blood under a nearby tree he calls “Hangman’s Tree,” because it reminds him of a stranger he once saved from suicide. He found another lean red rooster wandering in the tall grass near the traffic of Cross Bay Blvd. Yaseen, a slight man in his early forties, carried the dying birds to his camp under the nearby North Channel Bridge in Howard Beach, Queens, where for months he had lived, homeless. He nursed them back to health on the edges of his fire pit, cutting strips of stale bagels he took from the trash of a nearby shop and soaking the pieces in water. The discovery of abandoned chickens continued into spring and summer. As the weather became warmer, Yaseen said he was finding a chicken or two a day. At one point, Yaseen’s flock surpassed 25, 20 of them roosters. If others hadn’t died or disappeared, he estimates the number would be doubled. “I don’t know who brings them,” Yaseen said in June. “They leave them in boxes to die.”

Those that are killed might be the luckier ones. Abandonment, a lesser-known custom, may be less humane than putting the creatures to a quick death, animal experts say — and those being counseled to complete the ritual are often paying a sizeable sum to do so, in hopes of gaining relief from some illness or misfortune. Religious ceremonial practices involving animals are protected under the Constitution, but the practitioners are not exempt from animal cruelty laws. State laws make animal abandonment a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to $1,000 and one year in jail, and more stringent cruelty statutes come into play if an abandoned animal is found dead. Local elected officials say they are skittish about trying to regulate religion, though, and instead focus their attention on the cleanup of fruits and other debris some worshipers are leaving behind. “If something is legal, it’s within the limits of the law, then I have nothing to say,” said state Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder, whose south Queens district includes Howard Beach and Rockaway. “I think it’s a very slippery slope once you start regulating religion.” But make no mistake: Leaving a frightened, oftentimes wounded chicken in a sealed box, stashed away in a dense marsh to endure an agonizing death, is clear-cut cruelty; by law, it should be prosecuted. Few outsiders seem to know it is happening though — not the politicians, not the nearby residents or National Parks Service, not even PETA. The only person who has taken any interest whatsoever in the animals’ well-being, it seems, is this struggling boiler repairman who encountered them along his own circuitous journey to redemption. Yaseen, one of eight children whose father built boats in their small village, admits that he’s made mistakes but says he has been wronged; his homelessness is a passing phase, he says, and he sees saving the chickens as one test along his path back to stability. “God don’t ask you to sacrifice life,” he said. “He gave everyone life. He never asked anyone to take lives to serve him in any religion.”

Animal sacrifices, otherwise known as blood rituals or life-giving rituals, are nothing new in New York City and the surrounding area; they are not permitted in parks, but still get carried out from time to time. The city Parks Department documented 33 separate incidents in which animal heads and decapitated corpses were found in city parks between 2010 and 2014, reported New York magazine. Santeria practitioners leave skinned goat heads in Park Slope and in Suffolk County, Long Island; followers of Voodoo abandon pig carcasses in Forest Park, Queens; and Orthodox Jews swing live chickens over their heads on Brooklyn streets before having their throats slit, believing they’re transferring their sin to the animals in a pre-Yom Kippur rite called Kaporos. Hindus from local temples — most are members of a robust Guyanese community in neighboring Richmond Hill and Jamaica — perform puja on the banks of the bay, fondly nicknamed the Queens Ganges after the river in India that is held sacred. On weekends, Yaseen stands near the base of the bridge and watches the worshipers, singing, burning incense, playing music and dipping fruits into the water as offerings. Most worshipers take away the remnants of their religious ceremonies, but some leave their statues, flowers, saris and flags on the sand. Traditional Hinduism stresses the power of the water. Priest Shekhar Persaud, who leads the Katyayini Maa Peetam Vedic Temple in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, brings his congregation to the banks of Jamaica Bay under the North Channel Bridge to offer puja once a year. They do not practice animal sacrifice or abandonment.

“When you go to Crossbay to perform rituals, especially if it’s in a really peaceful and loving way and not destroying anything, you will find love and happiness there.” -- Priest Shekhar Persaud

“I find peace, I find happiness there by going to the river, because where I’m from in Guyana, I’m from right next to the river,” said Persaud. “When you go to Crossbay to perform rituals, especially if it’s in a really peaceful and loving way and not destroying anything, you will find love and happiness there.” Ritually abandoning chickens — and occasionally other animals, such as goats and pigs — is thought to rid a person of negative energy or sickness, or to be a way of offering the deities a bit of one’s own abundance. “People think it’s a voodoo thing, but it’s not a voodoo thing,” said Jerome Gajraj, an assistant priest at the Om Sati Amaa Temple in South Jamaica, Queens, a Kali church that limits offerings to coconuts and fruit and does not practice animal sacrifice. “If someone believes they have Obeah (a curse) on them, a person would have to get a chicken, go to the temple with the sacrifice, do work on the chicken, go to the beach and loose the chicken,” he added. “They are thinking that whatever bad work would go back on the person who did the Obeah on them.” Pundit Ganesh Bram, the leader of Om Sati Amaa Temple, defended the animal work and its practitioners, calling it “a way of worshiping the divine mother.” “I don’t want to say they are wrong,” he added. “And I know they are not wrong.”

The green space of Spring Creek Park is part of the greater Gateway National Recreation Area, federally protected parkland that stretches from New Jersey’s Sandy Hook through Staten Island and over to Kennedy Airport in Queens.

The green space of Spring Creek Park is part of the greater Gateway National Recreation Area, federally protected parkland that stretches from New Jersey’s Sandy Hook through Staten Island and over to Kennedy Airport in Queens.

Northwest of the bridge between Howard Beach and Broad Channel, the reeds are so dense that navigating their thin trails feels like wandering a maze, one that stretches 47 acres along the beach and across the border into Brooklyn.

Northwest of the bridge between Howard Beach and Broad Channel, the reeds are so dense that navigating their thin trails feels like wandering a maze, one that stretches 47 acres along the beach and across the border into Brooklyn.

People who live near Cross Bay, and those who frequent the area, say they know all about the religious rites, though most remain largely unaware of the practice of abandonment. Their biggest concern, they say, is the detritus some worshipers are leaving behind after the ceremonies. “It’s an ongoing problem down there,” said Joann Ariola, president of the Howard Beach/Lindenwood Civic Association. “We have people going there and leaving carcasses behind, leaving heads behind, leaving garbage behind. The odor wafts up when the wind blows. The federal Parks Department does not have a great deal of manpower. By the time we make a complaint and it gets to the patrol, the activity has ceased.” Tim Demaj, who lives in Howard Beach and frequently fishes near the North Channel Bridge, said he once passed a group of people walking a live goat from a parked van on Cross Bay Blvd. down to the water’s edge. He said he’s seen abandoned chickens, some sickly, and even a few that were beheaded. “I actually wrote a letter to our local government officials here to take some action,” he added.

The slaughter of animals for constitutionally protected religious purposes was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1993 ruling, but animal abandonment and animal cruelty are illegal. “It may be protected, but it’s still subject to the cruelty laws in any given city or state and you’re still not permitted to do something that might otherwise be illegal,” said Ashley Byrne, a New York City-based campaign specialist with PETA who said she was unaware of the loosing of chickens in Queens. “The things that are considered excessive cruelty under the law are considered illegal, regardless of who’s doing them and why.” Animal experts say that leaving chickens to make their way in an urban park is tantamount to sentencing them to a slow, tortuous death. “They wouldn’t have much of a chance, especially in the winter,” said Dr. Shachar Malka, the avian medical specialist at the Humane Society of New York. He estimates that he treats from five to 10 loose chickens each year, some that fell off transport trucks, others that seemed to be abandoned. “Chickens are sensitive,” he added. “They give a lot of affection. If they have their talons cut or they are debeaked, their chances of survival are . . . they have very little chance of survival.” City and state officials contacted by the Daily News said they were unaware of the Kali abandonment rituals. A police source said that the 106th Precinct has received calls from people who spotted animal carcasses in the area, but because Spring Creek Park is located on federal parkland the NYPD does not have jurisdiction. Daphne Yun, the acting public affairs officer for the Gateway National Recreation Area, told the Daily News that animal sacrifice is not permitted in a national park. Still, there appears to be little effort being made to enforce those regulations by the rangers who patrol the park, one of whom smiled and told a reporter the most he could do was to cite a lawbreaker for littering. “We have so many laws on our books, that it’s hard to enforce,” said state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr. (D-Queens), whose district includes the North Channel Bridge (which was re-named in honor of his late father, a longtime U.S. Congressman). “We find that this is one of those categories that is most frustrating.”

Yaseen says he was once a successful boilermaker, with cars and a rented apartment in Queens. On weekends, he would park his car on Cross Bay Blvd. and walk through the hole in the fence near the base of the bridge. With the expansive wilderness of the park to his right and the bridge to his left — and beyond that, the runways of the airport, he would fish for bluefin and sea bass until nightfall. He became friends with George, a homeless former chef who had lived under the bridge for years. He never imagined that one day he would lose everything and join him, but that’s what happened. Now, they would sleep side by side in a narrow walkway between the stone base and the iron fence. Each morning they would awaken to the sound of quietly rippling waves and the rumble of cars overhead. More recently, their days opened with the crow of a healthy rooster. “They need to be running around freely because nobody wants to be in a cage,” Yaseen said. “They want to be free.”

Yaseen often seemed to envision the circumstances of his own life in parallel terms. “I mean, really and truly it’s better off being homeless than being in jail,” he said another afternoon, sitting against the graffiti-covered side of the bridge on a chair facing the sun, a small cigar in his mouth and a small radio tuned to 1010 WINS. “At least you’re free to walk all over the place, go anywhere you feel like. But once you get locked up, there’s nothing you can do.” The two men wandered the area from Aqueduct Racetrack to East New York, collecting bottles and cans and redeeming them for deposits. The money helped him survive between boiler man gigs, and he’d buy bird seed to go with the stale bagels he found for his flock. Yaseen built a ragged chicken coop out of cardboard boxes on the other side of the fence, where the birds could huddle for warmth at night. The chickens ventured out during the day, but only a small distance in either direction of the camp. Only one — a large white broiler rooster that looks like he came out from a lifetime in a cage — walked over the sand, past where the others wouldn’t go, to the edge of the water. He stood still for a long time, as if admiring the view and eating the fruit left along the shoreline by Hindu worshipers.

Wazir Mohammed, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University East in Richmond, Ind., whose work has focused on Guyana, compares “loosing” to the biblical tradition of letting a white dove go at a funeral, memorial or wedding. It is a ritual that traces back thousands of years — from Hindu practices of South India to the South American country of Guyana, where Indians went as indentured laborers, in the nineteenth century, to supplant the slaves from Africa. Indo-Guyanese began immigrating to New York City in the late 20th century; their numbers are estimated at 139,000, according to the most recent “Newest New Yorkers” survey. Some Guyanese of Indian descent practice a form of Hinduism that centers on Mother Kali, the goddess of protection from darkness. They belong to churches and temples, often underground groups whose worship involves performing puja with animals, rum and cigarettes. Many of these churches are housed in basements and backyards of residential homes, which can be identified by the red and yellow flags that are displayed in front. Sources familiar with the community estimate that there are around 50 Kali Temples in New York City, most of which are in and around the Queens neighborhoods of Richmond Hill, Ozone Park and Jamaica. Some Kali deities are said to command an offering of chickens though their sacrifice by death is forbidden, said Dr. Marcelo Moura Mello, a Brazilian anthropologist who has written about the religious practices in the Berbice region of Guyana. Most Hindus in Guyana view animal sacrifice with prejudice, he said. “They must continue Kali worship. If you stop doing from generation to generation, you are punished. You lose your job, lose your home.”



“They must continue Kali worship. If you stop doing from generation to generation, you are punished. You lose your job, lose your home.” -- Randolph Latchana, member of a Queens temple “The purpose is to offer something to the deity as a sign of devotion and submission,” he added. “In that sense, chickens are loose after the deity demands it and it’s part of more offers or pujas. Animals are never offered alone or without purpose.” Randolph Latchana, 60, a member of a Queens temple that “looses” chickens, explained that his Madrassi ancestors clung to their religious practices, even as the British set up churches and tried to convert them to Christianity. “They must continue Kali worship,” said Latchana. “If you stop doing from generation to generation, you are punished. You lose your job, lose your home.” This is referred to as Obeah — an occult belief, often tied to the Afro-Caribbean community, that an underlying power or force governs all things. “Obeah is basically the idea that there is some supernatural force that affects everyday human circumstances,” said Prof. Mohammed. “If something goes wrong with someone, then it’s a bad omen, and you can perform a religious rite. You can do a puja or a sacrifice.” One of the most common Obeah spirits originated in pre-British colonial Guyana, when the Dutch oversaw the slave plantations along the Atlantic coast. Many of the chickens that Yaseen has saved, and raised under the bridge, may be thought to be possessed by the evil spirits of the Dutchmen of Guyana, to be exorcised by adherents of an ancient religion that continues to evolve across the world and over time. “What we’re seeing on Jamaica Bay right now is the way in which these people are trying to carry out their practice, their knowledge of the world, and their understanding of their place and their role in the world,” said Prof. Mohammed. “These belief systems are not new; they are thousands of years old, and they were transported to wherever East Indians were taken: Mauritius, Fiji, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, Suriname. . . . ” And now Queens.

















To the horror of many Hindus and others who frequent Spring Creek Park, some of the people who perform animal sacrifices and “loosing” ceremonies treat spirituality as a business, one that targets vulnerable people. “I think this is the very lowest form of worshiping God,” said Persaud. "And most people do that with high expectations: ‘I’m giving this sacrifice, so I will get rid of my problems or I will get some sort of material prosperity.’” A devotee with an illness, loss or need, for example, or one who believes he or she has been placed under an Obeah spell, will seek counsel — a “reading” — from a priest. The cleric may instruct the person to buy a chicken or a goat, and charge a fee to do the ceremonial “work” on the animal. The treatment of the animals often ventures into the inhumane, as they are bathed, dyed, thrown and pulled. Eventually, they are killed or abandoned alive in a quiet, out-of-the-way spot, such as Spring Creek. The chickens are sometimes purchased at one of the approximately 90 live poultry markets that operate in the city. These businesses are required by law to slaughter the birds on premises, according to the state Department of Agriculture, but some markets have been known to let customers sneak a live animal outside the facility - often tied up and concealed in plastic bags or within the box in which they will later be abandoned. “They say, ‘Give me $1,000 and all your problems will go away,” said Gajraj, the Om Sati Amaa Temple assistant priest. “They see a person that’s willing to do anything for help. The Priest will talk to the them one-on-one and the person will put a price. . . . Some Kali Temples are business.” “We feel sorry for the people because they are getting taken advantage of,” he added. “The victims are people who really need help.”

“They said that I have to kill a goat or I have to kill a chicken. So I asked them, why I have to do that? They said to have something I have to give something.” -- Eunice Keahmally

Eunice Keahmally is one person who tried turning to Kali to help get her through some low points in her life, and she recounts uneasy memories of the experience. The Queens woman, now 62, said she had suffered 18 miscarriages and was desperate to start a family years back, when a friend encouraged her to seek the counsel of priests at a Kali temple in East New York. “They said that I have to kill a goat or I have to kill a chicken. So I asked them why I have to do that. They said to have something I have to give something,” she recalled. She was unable to do it. She visited another Kali church four years later, after her husband began drinking, to try to make him stop. The priest there told her they loose the animals, rather than killing them. Keahmally, a sweet, sensitive woman who is now a vegetarian and the caretaker of a traditional Hindu temple, was at the time too desperate to refuse. A priest did a reading, and instructed her to buy a live rooster and fruit, and bring them to the temple with $500. “They take it out from the box, and they throw water on it, they hold the wing and the leg and they throw water on the whole chicken and bathe it,” she said. “And then they hold the chicken head, he give me the wing to hold. He holds the head and throws some water in the chicken’s mouth. He puts dye and cinder and things on (the bird’s) head, and he tells me to pray. And ask God that I’m giving this life to him, and if he can make my husband stop drinking. “I faced the murti (a statue of a goddess) after I finished praying, and I hold it and thrown the chicken over my head. And like this, he falls on the floor. And then he got up and he run. And they catch it and put it in the box. “They put it in a box and they tell me to take it to a lonely place or take it to the beach and loose it. I took it to the cemetery in a lonely place and loosed it. “But it hurt my heart to do that. I begged the rooster, I said, ‘Forgive me for doing this to you.’ In my prayers, every time I pray I ask for forgiveness.”