Washington Post
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Virginia -- When a neighbor's rooster began crowing in the middle of her pool party last month and everyone laughed, Virginia Paris did, too, but privately, she was seething. Already, marauding hens had ransacked her flower garden; now, an unruly cock was conjuring Old MacDonald for her guests.
"It was embarrassing," said Paris, who lives with her family at the top of a tidy cul-de-sac in Dale City. She and her husband have since staked a "for sale" sign to their lawn, seeing the rooster moment as a low point in the long decline of their feelings about the area.
"It was too much," Paris said. "I can't live with roosters in my neighborhood."
Backyard poultry have been popping up all over Prince William County recently, to the amusement-- and alarm -- of residents and county officials. County zoning laws ban farm animals from most residential areas, but in the past year, inspectors have tallied as many as 32 chicken violations, a large increase from 2004, when they had three.
Posted by tyne at July 14, 2007