Catch-22 for missing Cline chickens

Last week’s grand theft of 413 baby chicks from Fred and Nancy Cline’s Second Street East home contains a minor legal conundrum involving Sonoma’s animal code.
The chicks were stolen from a large shed on the three-acre Cline property sometime between 1 and 8 a.m. on Monday, April 14, Sonoma police Sgt. Clint Shubel said Tuesday.
“Typically, to haul that many chickens you need a basket carrier – and all the ones the victim had were still there,” Shubel said. “[Chicks] aren’t just something you can carry one at a time.”
However, they’re also not something permitted under city ordinances. Section 8.08.030 of Sonoma’s municipal code doesn’t allow anyone “to keep or maintain … any animals other than household pets in the city, without having applied for and received a permit from the chief of police to so do.”
Shubel said the Clines didn’t have a permit, but they likely wouldn’t be cited since “we don’t have any evidence that they had any chickens, because they’ve all been stolen now.”
For his part, Fred Cline said Tuesday that he was “flabbergasted” to learn of the city’s livestock law, adding, “I didn’t know you even had to have a permit.” He said the chicks, ranging in age from one to five days old, were eventually destined for egg production at Petaluma’s Green String Farms – a co-venture with local farmer Bob Cannard, Jr. He also said that some 80 chicks and their feed were stolen over the course of two nights last spring from another Cline location.
The case is still under investigation, and Shubel asks anyone with information to call Sonoma Police at 996.3602.