San Juan Bautista
– One month has passed since San Juan Bautista made feeding
feral fowl illegal and though the city has yet to issue a citation,
many local residents report fewer chickens afoot in the Mission
City.
San Juan Bautista – One month has passed since San Juan Bautista made feeding feral fowl illegal and though the city has yet to issue a citation, many local residents report fewer chickens afoot in the Mission City.
“You used to see bands of chickens roaming the streets, sometimes one would even come into the store and hide in the corner,” said Diane Perazzo, owner of Bluebird Antiques and Collectibles. “There don’t seem to be as many lately.”
While the new ordinance does not specify a specific penalty for chicken sympathizers who see fit to share lunch with their feathered friends, the San Juan municipal code mandates that the first infraction would constitute a fine of $50, and a second within 12 months would cost $100, with an additional fine of $500 for every infraction thereafter. The ordinance was passed in late March after years of debate at city council meetings. Council members determined an ordinance would be a good place to start addressing frequent complaints about the mess and noise caused by the chickens.
In order to pay their debt to society, however, the chicken feeder would have to be caught, and San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill has made it clear his department will not assume the role of poultry police. The only other office capable of enforcing the ordinance would be the city’s code enforcer, a position San Juan contracts out. Incidentally, calling out the code enforcer would likely cost more than the fine.
“If somebody had received a ticket for chicken feeding, I would have heard about it by now,” said San Juan Bautista city council member Chuck Geiger, who voted against the ordinance. “We have to actually call our code enforcement officer in and tell them what to do, and that’s $80 an hour. That’s just not going to happen.”
Regardless of whether the ordinance is enforceable or not, there are noticeably fewer chickens clucking along Third Street. The particularly observant can still spot a number of solitary birds within the city, but whether they are being forced to look elsewhere for food or if their disappearance is a temporary side effect of the rainy weather remains to be seen.
“I think it’s sad,” said Kathy Hozhoni of the Gallery at San Juan, who often portrays the local chickens in her own artwork. “I’ve been known to share a taco or two with some friendly chickens, if I feed them they’ll stick around so I can sketch them… If a chicken came to my door and looked like he was hungry, I would still feed him.”
The thinning numbers may also be attributed in part to the efforts of San Juan’s chicken-catching brigade, headed by resident Dan Vermilyer who estimates that he and his fellow chicken-nabbers – primarily high school students with some free time after school – have caught and relocated around 80 chickens over the past few months with the use of oversized fishing nets and a little strategy.
“I believe there has to be a magic number for how many chickens we can keep downtown that everyone can agree on, whether it’s 10 or 20 or whatever,” he said. “But how are you going to keep them in a centralized location if nobody’s feeding them? There’s a lot of problems with how this city is dealing with chickens, but we’re just out there having fun.”
Even if Mission City residents choose to cease and desist their chicken-feeding efforts, many are skeptical as to whether starving the birds will be effective.
“All I know is I saw a proud looking rooster at the post office the other day, and he had four hens with him,” said Geiger. “And I thought ‘Wow, what a great life.'”
