A group of vegan extremists is serving up lots of guilt—with a side of hysteria, over easy—to some very unlucky restaurant patrons. These so-called animal “liberation” activists recently staged a bizarre demonstration in an effort to guilt unwitting diners over breakfast. Kicking off the stunt, a hysterical young women storms into a restaurant and begins fervently describing the “abuse” of a “little girl” named “Snow.” Spoiler alert: Snow is a chicken.

The speaker goes on to tell the story of the chicken she took from a farm. The woman claims the chicken was habitually “crying” and “scared every single moment” until the animal was almost “murdered”—a near-death experience that evidently lends the chicken a “determined look in her eyes wherever she goes.” (Umm…right.)

Annoyed to realize her narrative is soliciting giggles instead of guilt, the speaker wails: “Someone was going to murder her [the chicken]. And I can see you smiling. And I can see you laughing. But to her [the chicken], this is not funny.”

But the punchline of the protest isn’t the bird-brained message of the campaign: It’s the affiliation of the chicken-hugging messengers—or more accurately, their non-affiliation.

Normally, it’s pretty safe to assume that bizarre disruptions in the name of animal “liberation” are the handiwork of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). But even though PETA isn’t at the helm of this particular restaurant rampage, its fingerprints are all over it: radicalism, a disregard for the law, intrusive and personally invasive tactics, hyperbolic emotional manipulation — all the pillars of a PETA “press-slut” campaign are accounted for. The restaurant protestors might as well have thrown some red paint—or at least squirted some ketchup—on the breakfasting “murderers” on their way out.

Ironically, PETA’s version of animal liberation holds that animals are better off dead—that’s how PETA justifies its killing of the cats and dogs in its care or its advocacy that feral cats be systematically killed. If killing animals is morally justifiable, then what’s wrong with humanely raising chickens on a farm and using them for food? Nothing, unless you have a profoundly blame-humans-for-everything view of the world. For people who complain about “speciesism,” that’s a rather bizarre mentality.