So She Thought: When country comes to town (and crows about it)

One of the things I like about living in this area is the fact that property, lifestyles and ways of thinking kind of straddle the line between town and country. On any given weekend, for example, you'll see the folks who own country property dining in city restaurants or shopping at the mall. Poke your head over people's suburban back fences (assuming you can do it and not get yourself arrested) and it's not unusual to find all manner of livestock living within the city limits. Country comes to town -- and stays there -- much more often than most people or the city authorities realize.

I know for a fact that there is a happy goat living in a suburban backyard in Armona, a pot-bellied pig living in a subdivision in Lemoore, and even a small flock of ducks enjoying poolside life in Selma.

I've been pondering this because we recently found a good home for our own bit of country which had been living in our backyard for several months -- a huge, black and white chicken. Of course the chicken was not big, or even black and white, when we first got it. A few months ago, around Easter, my husband found the baby chick sitting all alone in the middle of the road in our subdivision, during one of his 10 p.m. evening runs.

For my husband, I know this was a dilemma worthy a brain aneurysm, or at least a bad headache. Do you pick up the chick and bring it home to your animal-loving wife, who will insist on allowing it to roam free through the house and sit on the kids' shoulders while they're playing video games until everyone's just too in love to part with it? Or do you leave the pitiful, peeping ball to sit, cold and vulnerable, in the street and return home, saying nothing?

My husband proved again exactly why I love him, and brought the little chick home, under the strict admonition that we could only keep it until we found her real home.

The problem is, keeping chickens within the city limits (a common practice, according to my friends at the local feed store) is technically illegal. So the next day there were no signs on the mailboxes or even in the newspaper advertising a lost chick. And we couldn't go door to door asking people if they'd lost a chick, because by admitting we had her, of course we were breaking the law, too. So the little chick settled in and became part of the household, living in a cage and eventually an aviary along with our other birds.

All of this would have been fine, except over the next few months, our growing chicken had some definite ideas about how to establish her place in the household, one of which was starting to crow when we let her out for her morning run in the back yard.

We're still not sure if we had a crowing hen, or if our chicken was actually a feminine-looking rooster, but it made for some interesting conversations around the house.

"Dad, is the hen gay? She seems very 'butch.'"

"I don't know, kids. Ask your mom."

Ah, country life.

There were some areas where she proved to be a definite asset in a suburban environment, however. She completely rid our backyard of every plant-destroying pest hiding there, and I can truly say my flowerbeds have never looked better. She also killed several mice while on patrol, which adds yet another interesting chapter to our ongoing Mouse Project.

But unfortunately, thanks to the crowing, our little secret venture into the poultry-raising business ended before it really began. And while I personally see no harm in keeping a hen or two (and if you've seen the price of eggs you may agree with me) in a suburban backyard, anything that greets the dawn by crowing will probably not be popular with your neighbors.

So ultimately, we decided we'd better find a good home for our chicken before the noise became an issue for anyone. Luckily, as I pointed out, we are blessed to live in an area where town meets country, which means we have friends and acquaintances who live out beyond the city limits, where the roosters (and "butch" hens) crow, and there's livestock all around.

We found a wonderful home for our beautiful black and white chicken, out in the real, honest-to-goodness, beyond-the-city-limits country. She now lives with a very kind family, 11 other black and white hens, two donkeys and a goat, who we've been told she likes to sleep on, much as she did the kids' shoulders when she was small.

And, most importantly, her new family seems to love her as much as we did, and probably love her much, much more than our neighbors did. So while keeping a couple of hens in a secret suburban poultry project may be do-able, we suburbanites need to remember the Golden Rule of Suburban Livestock-Keeping, which is this: If it's gonna crow, it has to go.

Diane Sayre is a freelance writer living in Hanford. Her column appears weekly in the Sentinel. Readers can write to her at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232.

(Aug. 18, 2008)