After the chicken incident, it spread to school for grandson
dear, and then I began to think about how we have to test for drugs, have a
background check, a criminal check, everything but a toenail check, if applying
for a loan, a school, a job, a house. “Don’t you want to be safe?” they say.
“Would you like it if…” Okay okay, I get it, I just don’t like it.
I once heard that the Euro train system was built on the
honor system. You paid to get on, you rode, no one checked. However, if on a
random check the powers that be found you had no ticket—off you went. Right
there, on the spot.
I just wish we weren’t so afraid we were going to be ripped
off, taken advantage of, molested, robbed, run out on, or made of fool of, duped,
or lambasted. Am I a dreamer?
Remember Michael, Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine ? There he investigated violence in our
country and found it to be fear based.
Perhaps I’m being foolish. On one hand I follow a belief
system that you create your own reality (within reason, this belief isn’t for
fools there are many codicils.) On the other hand I look at the world. I
experience it, I have a reaction.
A psychiatrist once told me,”It isn’t how society imprisons
you it’s how you imprison yourself.” Okay, okay. I get it. I still wish fear
wasn’t so rampant.
“You have to leave,” the woman at grandson’s school told me.
“Somebody has to be with you.” She said. I looked around.
There was no one in the room but my grandson and myself. I was playing a game
with him until others arrived. Just drop him off into an abyss?? Well, that
lasted two days.
Last Saturday a neighbor came over with blood in her eye. I
wasn’t home, so she accosted my friend and my husband, railing at how much she
had paid for a building permit, and money for the common area around this
complex. It was funny really. Here we
were renters with no responsibility. I
wonder where that check goes each month? I get it, it’s the sheep herders vs. the
cattle people all over again—aka , landowners, verses squatters.
HER REAL COMPLAINT WAS MY CHICKENS.
I went to her house to hear her complaint first-hand.
She had heard my little loud-mouth rooster crowing. He was
supposed to be a female as the other two are, but like most male birds he was
beautiful to attract a female, and he attracted me. Last September I bought him as a tiny three-day-old
peep—that means he is three-months-old now.
It’s my fault. I
should have gotten rid of him the moment I heard that “Woo Woo” of a juvenile’s
voice changing, but I stalled not knowing what to do with him. Now, Mr. Loud
Mouth has to crow about 15 times in secession. I had asked for permission from
the Property Manager before I got the three baby chicks.. She said ok, and didn’t mention that there
were CCR’s for this area, but then it gave the neighbor pleasure to inform me. The
City of Eugene allows five chickens—I didn’t know we had CCRs.
I have a cute little self-contained chicken house, the
chickens are confined, no poultry wire—horrors. The neighbor mentioned poultry
wire like it was white trash. I’m
keeping my hens until the city says I can’t. But would anyone like a rooster?
Right now he is living in the garage. Hopefully muffled.
P.S. Minutes after I put a period at the end of the last
sentence, the same neighbor showed up at my door. It wasn’t CCR’s that denied
my right to chickens, but a City Ordnance. ”Except
for household pets and as otherwise permitted by ordinance, no person shall
keep or maintain livestock, bees of poultry within the city.”
I told her I was too upset to talk and closed the door. I
was. And then I had a thought, should I why cave in. Monday I’m going to the
city to ask for permission to keep them
as pets.
We’ll see.
The egg on the left is from a backyard chicken. The one on the right is store-bought.
P.S. This neighbor problems is a new experience for me. It tests my
diplomatic skills.
