Police Find Boy Cuffed With Dead Chicken on Neck

A neighbor sums up the situation: "That's some sick people." An animal control deputy responding to concerns about a pig on the loose in Union County, NC, found something far more horrifying on Friday: a boy, 11, handcuffed to a porch, with a dead chicken wrapped around his neck. Foster parents Dorian Lee Harper, 57, and Wanda Sue Larson, 57, who also have four adopted kids, have been charged with child abuse and false imprisonment; their treatment of animals at their home also resulted in a cruelty charge, WCNC reports. Five children, ages 14, 13, 11, 9 and 8, have been removed from the home south of Monroe, NC.

Harper is an ER nurse and Larson a social services supervisor for the county; that position landed her an extra charge of failure to discharge her duty as a public official. The couple, hit with a combined bond of more than a million dollars, will head to court today. Yesterday, police went to the house, where they offered care to a zoo's worth of animals, WCNC notes; turkeys and geese wandered free in a junk-filled yard, while two llamas and a horse were in a pen. Dogs have already been removed from the feces-strewn house, where the children slept on the floor in a single room and the foster child was routinely handcuffed to a section of railroad so he wouldn't escape, the sheriff said. (More foster homes stories.)