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'Banzai' Bashers Bray: Balloon Birds Bad Weeks before its first episode airs, the FOX game show/reality hybrid "Banzai" is facing its first controversy. The fracas isn't coming from Asian-American groups, who protested when clips from the show appeared on USA in 2001, but rather it stems from a San Francisco prankster who attempted to emulate one of the show's signature stunts by tying 100 helium balloons to a chicken.
The stunt appears in clips for the FOX show, which premieres on Sunday, July 13. Teasers for "Banzai," a British parody of Japanese extreme reality programs, feature two men speculating over the number of helium balloons it requires to make a chicken fly. On Saturday (June 21), a San Francisco resident attempted to take the same challenge and fitted a chicken named Amelia with balloons and released her into the wild. The chicken floated through the air freely until she became tangled in powerlines and had to be shot down by police offices wielding pellet guns.
Amelia returned to the ground safe and sound and is now, according to the San Francisco Gate, waiting at an animal shelter to be adopted.
"This is a great chicken, a friendly chicken, a chicken that is ready for a relationship," says Kat Brown, deputy director of the shelter. Chicken rights activists have been quick to enter the fray, lambasting both the act of reckless poultry endangerment and the FOX show that inspired it. "We are asking FOX to stop their cruelty or to confine it to those who can dish it back," says Karen Davis, president of the United Poultry Concerns animal-rights group. "FOX ought to be ashamed of themselves." Hen-lovers aren't the only people expressing concern. The Pacific Gas & Electric Company is holding a press conference on Friday (June 27) explaining the dangers of similar copy-bird stunts. PG&E will explain the dangers to people as well as poultry, explaining that birds on the wire can lead to fires as well as power outages. Related Shows
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