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Posted on Tue, Jan. 06, 2004

Neighbors fuss over woman's chickens
Decision to keep hens up to council
By JONATHAN SEGAL
jsegal@montereyherald.com

Two pet hens have a Pacific Grove neighborhood squawking, and it's up to the City Council to make sure nobody's feathers get too ruffled.

The council will consider Wednesday whether to let Valerie Landau keep two hens at the 19th Street home she rents. Some neighbors are concerned that the birds will attract raccoons or create a nuisance.

Landau, 45, and her 16-year-old daughter, Molly McGee, keep the birds in the fenced back yard at their home just blocks from Lovers Point in one of the city's densest neighborhoods.

Landau said the birds make less of a mess than dogs. One hen, a foot-tall Rhode Island Red, is named Lola because she's a showgirl, Landau said.

The other, a tan bantam, is named Garbanzo, like the bean.

The chickens are like part of the family, and don't cause allergies like some furry pets, said Molly.

"I love them just like I love any other animal," Molly said. "You can sit down next to them while they're sleeping. They'll lay on your lap. They're really cuddly."

But since August, Landau has been keeping the chickens at the house without a permit.

In October, Landau's next-door neighbor Gayle Sanborn reported the chickens to the city, according to a police report.

Sanborn, who apparently owns small dogs, said she feared the chickens were attracting raccoons to the area. The raccoons could attack her dogs, Sanborn told police.

Spurred by Sanborn's report, city animal control officer Elizabeth Conti-Yeo informed Landau that she needed to get a permit for the chickens. After an inquiry, Conti-Yeo is recommending that the City Council deny the pullets their permit.

Conti-Yeo's report to the council raised concerns about Landau's plan to keep the chickens cooped up at night and let them roam her 500-square-foot yard during the day.

Letting them roam the yard unsupervised might violate the city's animal ordinance. The report also said that Landau, a professor at CSU-Monterey Bay, was difficult to reach, a complaint Landau chalked up to the Thanksgiving-week timing of the inquiry.

Besides checking out the chickens' conditions, Conti-Yeo polled neighbors for possible problems.

Six neighbors said they weren't bothered by the chickens. But three neighbors cried foul, worrying about raccoons, the neighborhood's density, and the possibility of plunging property values.

"Any time that I hear that my tenants might be disturbed by any factor, I want that to be avoided," said a landlord who rents out a house in the neighborhood. "I'm afraid it might lead to other problems. You open the door, you never know what's going to come in."

Landau dismissed the concerns.

"This is too funny," she said. "As if we brought raccoons to Pacific Grove."

But another neighbor, 80-year-old Yolanda Shea, said she likes having the birds in the neighborhood. They remind her of her childhood, growing up on the border of Switzerland and Italy.

"They're not big, ugly chickens. They're cute," she said. "What can I say?"

Shea wondered what kind of town pouts over poultry.

"I guess we don't have too many problems in this town, if two little chickens can cause this much uproar."

As for Landau, she'll be at Wednesday's City Council meeting to beg for her birds.

"We're pro-chicken," she said, "and we vote."

Posted on Thu, Jan. 08, 2004

Council relents on pet chickens
Neighbors cry 'fowl,' but city grants permit
By JONATHAN SEGAL
jsegal@montereyherald.com

The Pacific Grove City Council balked at a recommendation to force a woman to give up her two pet hens after chicken supporters flocked to Wednesday's meeting.

The council voted 6-1 to permit Valerie Landau, 45, and her daughter, Molly McGee, 16, to keep Garbanza, a tan bantam hen, and Lola, a Rhode Island Red, at the 19th Street home they rent. A city animal control officer had recommended against allowing the chickens after neighbors expressed concerns that the birds would attract raccoons to the Lovers Point neighborhood.

Molly said she was relieved she could keep her hens.

"I don't consider them pets at all. They are my family," Molly said. "I just hope that you can think of them as my family too. You wouldn't want to tear my family apart."

Molly, a student at Monterey High School, and six of her teenage friends brought signs to the meeting to defend the birds. One sign, borne by 16-year-old James Palmer, read "Jesus was a chicken."

Landau said she was relieved that the council decided to permit the fowl. She told the council that her daughter's care for the birds is teaching her responsibility.

"I was really afraid of how it would affect Molly," said Landau. "She loves them. It would just break her heart."

But Gayle Sanborn, the neighbor who complained to the city, said that the neighborhood's raccoon population increased with the birds' arrival.

"It's not very much fun to go out at midnight and see raccoons in your yard," Sanborn said.

She also said the chickens have escaped in the past.

Landau had been keeping the birds illegally in her 500-square-foot yard since August 2003, without the city's mandatory permit. In October, Sanborn reported the chickens to Pacific Grove police, worried that the birds would attract raccoons that might endanger her small dogs.

Elizabeth Conti-Yeo, the city's animal control officer, received reports from two other neighbors who feared the chickens could create a nuisance and depress property values in the densely populated neighborhood.

Conti-Yeo was concerned that the chickens, left unattended during the day, could fly over Landau's six-foot-high fence and escape.

"They could hop the fence and there would be nobody there to control them," said Pacific Grove Police Chief Carl Miller.

Landau admitted that a bird of hers, a rooster, did escape the yard once. But, she said, that bird doesn't live at the house anymore.

The permit approved by the council will be reviewed in six months, and could be revoked if the birds escape.

"Is there any evidence that these chickens have flown the coop?" asked Councilman Jim Costello. "I didn't mean to egg you on."

Mayor Morrie Fisher voted against the permit because he believed the yard was too small to keep chickens. He also said the Landau home was too close to town.

But City Councilwoman Susan Goldbeck said that letting the chickens stay would preserve the city's character.

"We are a small town, we are a funky community," said Councilwoman Susan Goldbeck. "If we get too squared away, too squeaky clean, too neat, we start to lose some of that."
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Jonathan Segal can be reached at 646-4345.

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