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By adamg - 12/2/16 - 2:07 pm

Sophy Tuttle has quite the tale of what happened on her normally sedate Medford side street this morning when a drunken college student, on learning Tuttle's downstairs neighbor had packed three dozen chickens, a number of geese and ducks and an undetermined number of pigs in a trailer parked in the street, got a hammer and whacked the trailer open (all the while screaming "I know what I'm doing, my girlfriend goes to Tufts!"), releasing all the birds into the street (the pigs just stayed where they were):

I was woken up at 4:30 to the cops banging on our door screaming "Are these your f*%$ing chickens?!?!" "Get the F*%^ out here and get them!". My neighbor runs out and starts screaming at the kid. My next door neighbors and the farmer and his wife now spend the next 2 hours chasing chickens and ducks allll over my neighborhood, all while screaming like it's not 5am. While the kid is sitting in cuffs on my porch, the cop says "are you a college student?", to which the moron replies, "yea, I go to college". The cop replies, "that's why then. All you college kids are f*&%ing idiots". My roommates and I are standing on the porch, watching about 5 seasoned police officers chase chickens on a suburban street at 5 am and trying not to laugh, because, you know, they have guns.

By adamg - 10/19/16 - 9:27 am

WBUR is out with results of a ballot-question poll that shows recreational marijuana and more space for chickens winning, expansion of charter schools and letting that one guy build a slots parlor in Revere losing.

By adamg - 6/11/16 - 12:22 pm
Wild chickens in Roslindale

Veeconley deserves a Poulet-zer Award for photographing the feral chickens of Roslindale, traipsing around St. Michael's Cemetery off Walk Hill Street this morning like they owned the joint.

By adamg - 12/24/15 - 5:12 pm
Chickens in Cambridgeport

Ari Ofsevit reports he felt a lot safer around these Cambridgeport chickens than he would around some Brookline turkeys.

By Shelagh Dolan - 6/2/15 - 12:35 pm

The Zoning Board of Appeals today approved a variance for a six-hen coop in the back yard of Chuck Abichaker's 151 Stratford St. home. Read more.

By adamg - 6/1/15 - 9:40 am

The Zoning Board of Appeals tomorrow considers a request from a Stratford Road resident who wants to keep seven chickens in his backyard.

Chuck Abichaker, 151 Stratford St., is scheduled for a 10:30 a.m. hearing on his request for a variance to build a hen house for six birds - no roosters - at least 20 feet away from the nearest property line.

The hearing is in the board's eighth-floor hearing room in City Hall.

By adamg - 1/20/15 - 9:34 pm
Seized chickens in Worcester

Seized chickens, live and dead. Photo by MSP.

State Police report arresting six men in Worcester Sunday on animal-cruelty charges after finding live and skinned, dead chickens in their minivan.

State Police say the six were in a minivan on a journey from Queens, NY to Lawrence with the chickens and cockfighting-related equipment when a trooper pulled them over for "motor vehicle violations" around 5 a.m. on I-290 eastbound.

By adamg - 10/4/14 - 11:56 am
Chicken in Dorchester

Chicken, wondering whether it should cross the road.

Craebeck wonders who lost this chicken, spotted this morning on Lydon Way near Adams.

The sighting marks a departure from past Boston chicken sightings, which have involved chickens no longer able to lay eggs.

By adamg - 3/31/14 - 7:45 pm
Rooster in Somerville

Catherine N reports this rooster was walking down Hancock Street in Somerville this evening, which seems kind of appropriate.

By adamg - 7/11/13 - 6:05 am

Happened to be up at 5:10 a.m. here in Roslindale and heard a rooster crowing from somewhere in the direction of Washington, Beech and Walworth. Guess I better get going on that back 40.

By adamg - 7/5/13 - 10:56 am

The Jamaica Plain Gazette clucks that neighborhood zoning would trump a proposed citywide ordinance revamp to promote urban agriculture, and neighborhood zoning in JP and Roslindale, under which backyard chickens are not allowed to come home to roost, would trump that.

By adamg - 3/1/13 - 7:30 am

The Jamaica Plain Gazette interviews the owner of four chickens ripped to shreds by some sort of canine last month. No names, since live chickens are illegal in Boston (they'd named one of the chickens Dr. Richard Kimball).

By adamg - 3/2/12 - 8:08 am

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports some home-farming advocates aren't waiting for Boston officials to amend city zoning codes to allow backyard poultry, but that has at least one neighbor of an "illicit chicken-raiser" crying fowl.

By adamg - 2/17/12 - 8:22 am

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports city officials have started looking at changing a section of the city zoning code that prohibits backyard chickens and offers an exclusive interview with one of JP's bootleg chicken ranchers, who only talked on the condition she be identified by a pseudonym.

Last year, you may recall, a pioneering Roslindale resident was ordered to banish her chickens outside the city limits.

By adamg - 1/16/12 - 3:21 pm

Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition is holding a potluck dinner on Thursday at which to discuss urban agriculture, under a title that would be sure to get Zoning Board of Appeals members and ISD inspectors clucking: Backyard Chickens and Urban Agriculture:

Come hear from local chicken expert about keeping chickens. Hear stories of urban ag in JP, and share your own adventures.

By adamg - 7/12/11 - 1:44 pm

The Zoning Board of Appeals today denied a Roslindale resident's request to keep hens in her Firth Road backyard because city zoning codes expressly forbid poultry in Roslindale and Jamaica Plain - but nowhere else in the city.

By adamg - 4/6/10 - 11:39 am

Parrots Parakeets in East Boston, emus in Waltham and now this, the latest proof greater Boston is for the birds: One of our eagle-eyed correspondents reports spotting a chicken wandering

By adamg - 2/8/10 - 11:28 pm

The owners of three Cayuga ducks and two Wyandotte chickens are blogging to keep Cambridge from banning their pets.

Seems the People's Republic currently doesn't regulate domestic fowl, but apparently some neighbors of an eight-person co-op house on Putnam Street are clucking about odors, noise, rats and, of course, the specter of deadly flu strains.

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