Who are the Real Chickens?

For a city that has a bug up it's ass about being progressive, environmentally conscious and with the times Halifax has made some awfully strange decisions lately. It's one thing to bring your cloth bags to the stupidmarket and turn off your lights on Earth Night, but the real test of environmental respect comes in the hard decisions, things like installing bike lanes to get more people out of cars and letting people grow their own food.

I don't get you Halifax.

First, the chickens. It is against the law for people who live in HRM to keep chickens in their backyard. The reasons? Chickens are smelly and chickens are noisy, apparently.

I have chickens. Fortunately I don't live in HRM anymore so I can own them without fearing the wrath of the bird police. At this very moment I actually own 12 chickens, that's 9 more than most people in Halifax would like the right to keep. Are they smelly? Well, let me tell you, If I happen to track a lump of bird poop into the house it can get a little gross, but I can say the same for my dogs (who, as of yet, are not illegal in Halifax.) I work in downtown Halifax and on a daily basis I encounter far more offensive odors - people walking down the street smoking, women wearing so much perfume I can barely breathe in their presence, car and truck exhaust mixed with rotting garbage, barside puke and Eau de Harbour. The general rankness of any city outranks the smell of a few birds any day.

As for the noise, well, I have 12 chickens and there simply isn't any noise. I live outside the city and I'm frequently awakened by the sound of rain, spring peepers, a neighbour's dog or the buzzing of a mosquito who makes its way into my bedroom. I have yet to be awakened by my chickens (and I have roosters, too...if anyone's going to make noise it would be the roosters.) I guarantee that anyone who lives in the city would never notice the occasional peep of a chicken over the sounds of screaming children, arrogant crotch rockets, drunken partyers straggling home from Pizza Corner and the brain-rattling thud of far too much bass from pimped out Neons. The city is a noisy place already; if you can sleep there as it is, a few chickens are not about to stop you.

Allowing people to raise chickens means they can grow their own food, teach their children about natural processes (eggs really DON'T come from a styrofoam carton), have some control over the quality of what they're eating and reduce the amount that they rely on gas spewing transportation to deliver their food. In short, it's an environmentally friendly educational practice. Hmmm, it MUST be bad. Chickenshit would be the least of Halifax's problems - if it wasn't elected to Council to beak off with ridiculous ideas and by-laws.

So Halifax, you ban chickens and then you let a few business owners convince you not to build bike lanes. WTF? First you seriously consider the idea of charging people to park on residential streets that are near the downtown core (because Halifax has SOOO much awesome and affordable parking as it is). Then you refuse to do something that would encourage less people to bring their cars into the city - you vote against bike lanes on a very busy route that tons of cyclists rely on. I don't know what you're smoking, Halifax, but that just doesn't add up. I guess you figure that if you recycle, you don't need to cycle in the first place.

Halifax needs a serious wake up call. Sometimes life requires getting a little bit of dirt under your nails. If business owners on Herring Cove Road can't accept a bike lane let them move to a shopping mall where all they'll have to worry about are motorized scooters careening down the halls. If Halifax Council doesn't like chickens, that's okay. Next election Haligonians should vote the chickens in and send the turkeys packing.

I believe in karma and I'm pretty sure that with behaviours like these a whole lot of councillors are bound to end up with egg on their face. Hopefully they're green eggs - I hear those go great with ham.