Once again, our little Salida has turned out to be on the leading edge. Other Colorado cities, like Fort Collins and Longmont, are undergoing controversies about chickens, and we already had ours last year.
It goes back somewhat further, though. About a dozen years ago, I had a tenant who asked if he could grow some pot plants whose harvest he would share. I explained that while I personally didn’t care what he smoked, we had these stupid draconian laws which could result in governmental seizure of the property, and so I’d evict him in a heartbeat if I ever saw cannabis there.
He said he understood, then asked if he could keep a few chickens. Unaware that there was a city law against backyard poultry, I told him it was fine by me as long as the neighbors didn’t mind. He said he would bribe them with fresh eggs, and I thought no more of it until he moved out.
Chickens need feed, and unless the chicken feeder is careful, grain can get spilled all over the place. That attracts mice. So even though the chickens departed when he moved on, the rodents remained, and it took some serious work to eliminate them. Thus as a landlord, I banned chickens.
Only last year did I become aware of the municipal ordinance. The city police department had hired a new “code enforcement officer,” one who actually read the municipal code. When she heard some clucking one day, she cited a resident for the unlawful possession of a live chicken.
This hit the front page of the local paper, and my friend Monika, who kept a few hens, led the charge at the next city council meeting. She argued that backyard hens provided healthy eggs from a local source that reduced our dependence on foreign oil and shrank our carbon footprint, and thus only supporters of global terrorism, rising sea levels and bad nutrition could possibly oppose backyard poultry.
The city responded with a moratorium on enforcement, followed by legalization for a limited number of hens.
When we lived in Longmont about 35 years ago, it was legal to keep any livestock except swine within the city; my brother had checked the law because he kept a jackass in the city limits.
On summer mornings with the windows open, the crowing roosters woke me. It was a traditional and pleasant way to greet the dawn. Roosters seemed excited about a new day, whereas the braying donkey sounded mournful about the prospect.
I like strolling down alleys and seeing woodpiles, clotheslines, solar panels, chickens, rabbits, goats, vegetable gardens — all evidence that Americans are responding to the current economic climate in a sensible and time-honored way. Instead of whining about high fuel and food costs, we are taking matters into our own hands, and our municipal governments ought not to stand in the way.
But I’m not about to get my own chickens. We had them when I was a kid. It was my job to gather eggs after school. The hens pecked and squawked and I hated the chore.
Even worse, when my mom wanted a chicken for dinner, I had to hold it while she whacked off its head. The decapitated chicken body then ran around like something from a horror film. My boyhood logic said the head should do something similar, and so I had nightmares about giant chicken heads bouncing across the yard and grabbing little me with their beaks, gaining revenge.
To this day, I avoid eating chicken whenever possible. For that matter, I avoid chickens whenever possible. But no city should outlaw them.
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) is a freelance writer, history buff, publisher of Colorado Central Magazine in Salida and frequent contributor to The Post.
