Free-roaming chickens invade the Middle Keys
Nighttime cackles ticking off the neighbors
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By RYAN McCARTHY
rmccarthy@keynoter.com
Posted - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 07:01 AM EST
By RYAN McCARTHY
A growing flock of chickens and roosters scours the front yard of 74th Street resident Pauline Palmer for food.
Middle Keys retailers may want to stock up on earplugs: It appears the famed -- or infamous to some -- chickens of Key West have migrated north and are experiencing a population explosion in Marathon.
And the fowl are considered especially foul by many on 74th Street, where a growing flock of chickens and roosters is giving residents unwanted wake-up calls at all hours of the night.
"What about them? They crow all day and night," 90-year-old resident Pauline Palmer said.
"I put red mulch around the trees over there and they dig it all out," she said, pointing to her yard. "Then it gets all over my gravel driveway; it's a mess."
See Marathon's roving chickens
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Another neighbor, Alma Perez, said the chickens eat seeds she plants in the yard in front of her 74th Street home.
Palmer also has a number of houseguests, including former longtime Marathon resident Tomi Mercier, who finally resorted to buying earplugs at Walgreens Monday. And she's used to chickens -- she has them at her Montana home.
"They crow in the morning; they crow in the middle of the day. Mine are in a pen and I take care of them and they crow when they're supposed to crow," Mercier said.
Mary Snyder has been staying with Palmer on 74th Street for the last four weeks. She said the roosters' crowing wakes her up every night.
"They're really bad; you hear them all night long," the Vermont resident said.
But it was a friend of Palmer's, 73rd Street resident June Mason, who first brought the problem to the attention of City Councilman Dick Ramsay. In a Jan. 13 letter to Ramsay, the 77-year-old Mason said she hears the roosters crowing at 4 a.m.
"I have so much love for Marathon, but am sick of losing sleep for roosters," the 52-year resident said.
Ramsay said he's received several complaints "regarding the growing population explosion of chickens within the city."
"I have verified that this is the case and that due to this, our residents are being woken up at all hours of the night due to the crowing of these animals," Ramsay wrote in an e-mail to the Keynoter. "I do not wish to see a problem such as exists in Key West in our town."
But not everyone on 74th Street is bothered by the chickens.
Resident Della Dunford lives adjacent to the same vacant lot as Palmer and said she occasionally feeds the chickens. Tuesday, several chickens were seen eating food Dunford said was meant for her cats.
"They didn't ask to be put there," Dunford said of the chickens. "I hear them in the morning and sometimes in the middle of the night, but after they go to bed, you don't hear much from them."
The question this is where did the chickens come from? Without an answer, city Code Compliance inspector Cynthia McPherson said, it's difficult to remedy the situation.
McPherson said it's illegal to keep barnyard animals penned or loose in any residential zoning district in the city. But the chickens have been deemed free-roaming by the city.
"Typically, we would go on an inspection three times to try and find an owner because that's who we want to have take care of the problem," McPherson said, adding Marathon doesn't want the same issues as Key West.
Live poultry may be kept by any person in Key West, provided they're kept in sanitary coops or pens, their food is properly secured and their droppings are cleaned at least once every 24 hours.
"I'm looking at all possibilities, including setting traps and in an extreme case hiring a chicken catcher and offering a reward for every chicken caught," she said.
That was tried -- and failed -- more than once in Key West.
