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Fowled up: 7,500 chickens cause chaos on Austrian highway

By Allen Cone
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July 4 (UPI) -- Why did 7,500 chickens cross the road in Austria?

For emergency workers, it wasn't as simple as the saying, "to get to the other side."

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Instead, they had a big mess dealing with chickens on the busy A1 Autobahn near Linz in northwest Austria from a truck that lost its load.

"Boxes containing dead and injured animals were strewn over a 160-meter stretch while thousands of chickens ran onto the motorway on both sides," police said.

The motorway toward the capital, Vienna, was shut down during the busy morning rush hour and caused long traffic jams in the other direction as drivers caused a gapers' block.

The 120 firefighters moved the surviving chickens back onto the truck.

The driver of the truck transporting the chickens said he fell into "a second-long sleep" during which he veered right and collided with a bridge pillar, Franz Rockenschaub, of Highway Police Inspection Haid, told CNN.

The chickens from the undisclosed company were to be killed for food after they laid eggs.

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