Rooster-raising citation raises owner’s hackles

Given 30 days to comply with an obscure ordinance and give up her six pet hens, long-time resident, Doreen Proctor, appealed to neighbors, the press, and finally, the county. “How does an ordinary citizen get a public ordinance changed to permit keeping chickens as pets?” This question, raised in chicken-friendly El Verano, where distant rooster calls punctuate most outdoor conversations, would seem, at first hearing, at least curious. Chickens are everywhere, why not in one’s back yard? Especially, here.
Back in the early ‘80s, when she and her late husband built their El Verano creek-side house, Doreen Proctor, was surrounded by living things. “There were hundreds of chickens around,” she said. “We built here because of the rural neighborhood. There were no sidewalks, no curbs, no traffic. A horse was in the next block, at the old Verdier’s Resort, along with a peacock, and in the night, you could hear the cattle mooing, and horses hooves go clippity clopping down the street.”
These days, all that’s left of that old-fashioned idyll is embodied in the sounds of roosters crowing in the distance, and in her manicured garden, the rustling and clucking of a few tame hens. After months of anxious petitioning, her pleas finally reached the office of District 1 Supervisor Valerie Brown.
“What she wants, I believe, is absolutely appropriate,” said Brown. “We are a county that puts agriculture at the top of the agenda and certainly, a person who desires to have pets should be able to do that as well. I think this is a very special place, and I’m proud to live here. There is still, bless our souls, a very rural mentality here.” Brown will do what she can to assure that a few hens–not roosters, and not more than six–be allowed. Proctor is cautiously ecstatic.
“I am so happy I can’t even describe how much,” she wrote in an e-mail. Lovers of animals, great and small, will understand her joy.