Tuesday was a time of feverish activity for the Economic Development Authority in Fairfax County, just North of where I live. As soon as the leadership saw the front page of the newspaper featuring a drive to bring chickens back to Prince William County, the fax machines in the Government Center were put on full alert.
Every business thinking of locating in Northern Virginia would soon know of PWC’s rekindled passion for poultry.
Don’t you know there’s nothing like a few chicken feathers blowing through the background of a TV interview with our county officials to attract the urban sophisticate to your neck of the woods?
Residents of my county are already viewed by Beltway elitists as an inbred bunch of rednecks whose main activity is keeping the Mexican down. “Chicken rights” is just another example of those dumb clucks acting up.
Our own economic development department is probably trying to down themselves in the Potomac — assuming it would not upset the ecology or create too much traffic.
According to the paper the “pro–chicken movement” has grown to 23 residents — which is still smaller than the average lunchtime crowd at The Colonel’s. What’s more, I take exception to their appropriation of the “pro–chicken” descriptor. The day before I wrote this I ate part of a chicken for lunch. Surely you can’t be any more pro–chicken than that.
Pro-Chicken, Chicken Rights
The “chicken rights” supporters are squawking because you can’t keep poultry on lots as large as 100 acres, if that lot is located in an area designated as residential.
But as usual with activists there is always the hidden bait–and–switch. What they want the Planning Commission to do is indulge their boutique farming fantasy by allowing chickens on a lot as small as ONE ACRE.
Let me put this in terms with which we rednecks can relate. An American football field, the home of manly men, is 1.3 acres. Just as a thought experiment, let’s say a rooster perched on the 40–yard line and cut loose with a greeting to the sun at about 5:30 AM. Do you think you could hear him in your bedroom on the goal line?
I’ve got news for you: you can.
Back in the 80’s, when I lived in Dallas, TX, my neighborhood was located in the middle of the city. In fact, my duplex had been built in 1930, so it wasn’t as if homesteaders were still bustin’ sod.
On my block we had quite a few illegals doing the work American’s wouldn’t do and evidently they were also doing the animal husbandry that Americans wouldn’t do, because I lost count of the number of times I was awakened by a rooster crowing in old East Dallas.
And there was the time I thought a small child was being skinned alive as I raced down the street only to discover it was goat–killing day at the hacienda. (We won’t dwell on that because currently there is no pro–goat movement in PWC.)
Of course our pro–chicken activists are extremely nuanced in their desire to alter zoning codes. One–acre lots can keep chickens. Two or more acre lots can have ducks, turkey, geese, roosters, elephants, lions, tigers and the rest of the circus.
There is an upside according to the chicken wranglers. Your lack of sleep will be more than offset by their access to “farmfresh eggs, there’s nothing like it.”
Chickens do not make great pets. Chickens make great dinners
After reading the quotes from one of the chicken herders, I’m a little worried about his mental wellbeing. He claims “chickens make great pets.”
I’ve spent time around chickens and I can tell you from personal experience that dogs make great pets, cats can make great pets, but chickens do not make great pets. Chickens make great dinners.
You can’t teach a chicken to fetch. It won’t roll over. And a chicken won’t wait patiently by the door for you to get back from work.
But in all fairness I will say chickens can be trained to be great tic–tac–toe players. My wife, Janet was once beaten at tic–tac–toe by a chicken competing in the I.Q. Zoo, but I will let her tell that story.
If residential chicken herding is approved it will add just that hint of The Real McCoys to really # up our reputation. Assuming approval doesn’t queer any remaining slim chance we have to keep our minor league baseball team, the P–Nats, the new team mascot can only be Foghorn Leghorn. And it goes without saying the new stadium will be called “The Coop.”
But you can kiss any chance we had for a Morton’s Steakhouse goodbye. It’s going to be Hooters for as far as the eye can see.
