Backyard Chickens

My spouse pointed this out to me. I have toyed at times with the idea of bees in the backyard, or a windmill or two, but never chickens. According to the Trib, this is a new Chicago trend, "pets with eggs":

Since then, the idea of raising chickens has only become more attractive to urbanites, especially "locavores" who like knowing that their plate of eggs came from their own backyard. The birds also eat bugs and weeds, they happily devour food scraps such as wilted lettuce and carrot tops, and their manure can be composted into garden fertilizer.

Signs of the burgeoning urban chicken movement include a bimonthly magazine called Backyard Poultry, which started publishing in 2006, as well as popular Web sites and blogs including BackyardChickens.com and urbanchickens.net.

"It's exploding all over the country," said Martha Boyd, program director for Angelic Organics Learning Center in Woodlawn, which offered a workshop on basic backyard chicken care for Chicago residents last month.

Chicken#@! everywhere. (Sometimes a noise polluting, the horror rooster slips in as a chick--it's hard to tell when they're young.) And they attract rats.

I think I'll stick with BackyardConservative. Politics is less messy. I think. And we have enough rats around here.

Besides, how could I explain all this to my dog?

Pix courtesy of The Slow Cook.

P.S. Missoula Chicken controversy: