My assistant and I have been talking about pillows. Bed pillows. How difficult it is to find something light, fluffy with enough support to keep a neck from kinking. We had found some inexpensive ones at a discount store (which shall remain nameless.) I tried to remember why I hadn't owned or bought a feather pillows in years, so we each got one. I left, feeling like I'd got a pretty great deal, and with a smile, I looked forward to the wonderful experience of sleeping on a real feather pillow.
The question floated in the dark recesses of my mind, did I not like feather pillows? I laid my head down for a relaxing night’s sleep. A single feather poked me in the head. So, I pulled it out and let it fall to the floor. The next day, we went to the store to get cases for the pillows. That night, I slept pretty well. If a feather scratched out, I pulled it out and let it fall to the floor. After a week, there were enough feathers on the floor to wing a small bird. A second pillow case was obtained.
This worked for awhile. But eventually, after a month, they began emerging all over again, scratching my cheek, head and neck until I pulled them out.
When we couldn't stand it anymore, we removed the pillow cases to shake them outside. That’s when we saw how many barbs had actually migrated through the fabric. Try as I might, the feathers didn’t want to shake free; barbs stuck to everything. It was also when I noticed the pillow tag: Contains chopped waterfowl feathers. Uh… gross.
After washing the cases, pillows were stuffed back inside them. That night as I tried to sleep, bizarre imagery swirled in my mind. Pictures of dismembered birds, their feathers being unceremoniously plucked and boiled clean. Were these feathers from oil-spilled waters? Feathers harvested from dead water birds? Couldn’t they have put a little better spin on this? Used prettier sounding words? But even I couldn’t come up with anything that sounded pleasant.
When the chopped feathers began poking through again, another pillow case went over the pillow. How many cases can I put on one pillow? How many would it take before they stopped coming through?
I developed a-middle-of-the-night coughing spell. A dry hacking cough that went a few rounds before it allowed me to fall back asleep. This went on for a week or so, until I noticed on the dark colored sheets, what looked like a layer of dust at the head of the bed. Every time I moved them, fluffed, settled my head, shifted or turned the pillows, out sifted tiny white curls of waterfowl debris. The pillows were degrading. I felt nauseous. I removed the pillow from the bed and set it on the floor. I refused to sleep on it another night. I advised my assistant to do the same.
Interestingly, that night, I didn’t cough at all. The next day I and my assistant, who it turns out had not been sleeping well either, drove to a national chain store and looked at lots and lots of pillows. Foam, memory foam, cotton fiber filled, polyester, firm, soft, medium soft. Pillows for stomach sleepers, pillows for back and side sleepers. Prices from seven to twenty nine dollars.
We both settled on the same one: a firm/extra firm with a 2inch gusset. We took them home and slept like babies in cradles of clouds (I got a new body pillow too). I couldn’t believe the difference. So, I am one more step closer to a vegan mindset as a result.
I will not recommend feather pillows to anyone, and if you are suffering from respiratory illness of any kind, you may want to remove feather pillows as a first step toward improved health.
No comments:
Post a Comment