A Few Thoughts About Trespassing
Most domesticated animals are better off behind a fence--except bees
I recently asked Twitter for stories about chickens in their neighborhood and promptly got a windfall. (Please send me any you come across!) My favorite story was from Jimmy Thomson, the editor of a daily newsletter based in Victoria, B.C.. A cat named Ñirka, he wrote, was fined $150 dollars for trespassing. Ñirka was apparently going into a neighbor’s yard and stalking the chickens. No chickens were harmed in the act but the owners (if not the birds themselves) were unsettled by the threat of a cat in their yard. Any animal, at least in Victoria, can be a trespasser except for bees. “They are exempt from the law,” Thomson reported.
I tried bees last year and failed spectacularly. Within a month, one of my hives swarmed tauntingly out of reach. They remained three stories up in a nearby locust tree before moving on. I could see them, but I couldn’t reach them. Whether they lived out the rest of the year as a feral colony or were eventually picked up by a lucky beekeeper, I don’t know. I looked at every swarm posting for the rest of the summer closely as though, somehow, I would instinctively know my bees by sight.
Despite this early loss of thousands of bees, it seemed like honeybees were everywhere in my yard last summer. Whenever I went to eat outside, a bee or two would politely come up next to me to explore my sandwich. The neighbor kids have an aboveground pool that they’re in so often during the summer it may as well be a second home. I regularly hear them calling “Marco!” and “Polo!”. (Pool games, it seems, haven’t changed much since I was a kid.) But, last year, I also heard them shrieking about bees. Their grandfather had been a beekeeper so they were used to the little insects and their parents didn’t complain when I’d put in the hives but the bees, located just 30 feet from the pool, were very curious about the large body of water.
The Victoria animal fine with its exemption made me think about the nature of, well, nature and trespassing. Out of all the domesticated (or semi-domesticated) animals, no one expects owners to teach their bees to respect property lines. They regularly forage up to two miles from their hive and one honeybee looks pretty much like any other so the law would be hard to enforce anyway. But once upon a time, we didn’t think much about other domesticated animals roaming freely in the neighborhood either.
Dogs used to roam all day and maybe appear at home for some pets and a meal until laws changed. Now they’re expected to be leashed and collared and you’re even supposed to pick up their poop! This all feels very natural today but is fairly recent in the history of dogs as pets.
While there are plenty of free-roaming cats in my neighborhood, it feels like they may go the way of the dog soon. My local neighborhood group is full of posts about how bad cats are for wildlife and the fact that letting a cat wander outdoors is a great way to get him hit by a car, eaten by coyotes, or—best case scenario?—adopted by another family and never seen again. Portland has an annual “catio” tour to showcase the wonderful indoor/outdoor housing that can allow cats to smell the fresh air without the ability to go on murder sprees or actually leave home. Instead of thinking someone walking their cat on a leash is the local neighborhood quirk, we might now see them as a responsible pet owner. Standards are always shifting.
Today, if you see a free-roaming dog without an owner, chances are he doesn’t belong there. Cats are a little more complicated. I often wonder what the chances are that lost cats I see on posters get returned to their owners. How is anyone supposed to know whether the cat wandering down the street or snoozing under a bush is meant to be there or not? A chicken that has “free ranged” her way away from the flock is similarly hard for people to get a read on. Many people are so unused to seeing chickens at all that finding one walking down the street seems akin to spotting a unicorn. They’re so shocked that they don’t stop to think if she belongs there or not. A roaming hen might be a runaway, a drop-off, or happily living in the wild. (The latter is more likely to apply if you live in an area that doesn’t get cold in winter and has a large feral chicken population. Most chickens can’t safely live outdoors without human assistance.) If a neighbor knows a house on their road has chickens, they’ll likely assume a runaway hen came from there and that she’ll head back home at night.
A year ago, we started having problems with hawks. If I could fine hawks for trespassing in my yard, I’d have a lawyer on speed dial. In the sky or in the wild, I love raptors just as I’m captivated by all birds. In my yard, where they’re hoping my chickens will become their next meal, I am not a fan.
The last time we let the chickens free-range without supervision, we came home to find a Cooper’s Hawk had killed my sweet frizzle Harriet. Like most animals bred by people to be adorable, her survival skills were suspect. Her curled feathers meant she couldn’t fly and her fluffy pantaloons made it difficult to run. Once I realized there was nothing I could do for Harriet, my first step was to look for the rest of the flock and make sure they were okay. I quickly rounded up everyone and put them in the coop save for one bantam—my speckled chicken Emmylou. We found a small pile of her feathers near the garage but the bird herself was missing.
My husband, Lyle, and I searched the yard for thirty minutes. We looked under bushes and called her name. A few times, deep in the search, I thought I heard her squeaky voice answering me. She was just small enough it was possible someone had carried her away. Or perhaps Emmylou had been the hawk’s first meal and then he’d moved on to a second with Harriet. Grief swirled through my thoughts. I’d call her name and hear what sounded like an echo of Emmylou responding. I assumed it was grief and guilt worming its way into my imagination.
Lyle went to the neighbor whose house was on the other side of the fence from where we’d seen Emmylou. Maybe, just maybe, she had flown over the fence on her own and found a place to hide. “Oh sure!” the neighbor said. It got my hopes up until they added that they saw our chickens all the time.
This was confusing because our yard was fully fenced and we’d never, to our knowledge, misplaced a chicken—until now. Our flock didn’t simply wander the streets by day and return to the coop at night. Lyle asked the neighbor to describe the chicken they’d seen. The roaming hen was not Emmylou. I felt briefly frustrated by people who think that all chickens look the same.
When Lyle came back to the yard, we decided to do one last search for Emmylou though neither of us thought it would amount to anything. I have to admit I was half-hearted and sad in my looking. But, somehow, Lyle got the idea to lift up the compost barrel that was on its side next to the garage. It was wedged so tightly against the wall that it didn’t seem like anything but a mouse could slip underneath it. When you don’t expect to find what you’re looking for, it can make sense to look in impossible places.
There was Emmylou.
She’d flattened herself out as though a hawk still might be trying to grab her. Usually the chickens will come out of hiding after a while but Emmylou must have had quite an ordeal to still feel the need to hide after an hour. Yet there she was just a foot away from where the tuft of her feathers was still lying on the asphalt.
All this is just a way of saying that if you find a chicken in your yard or on the street or in the parking lot, there’s a good chance someone is looking for her. Even if not, it’s worth trying to catch him or her anyway (or call someone who is an expert chicken wrangler). Chickens sometimes enjoy trespassing to a space with nice shade, juicy bugs, and lots of fresh green plants but they’ll be happier and safer back at home in a flock.
News from the Coop
I turned in copyedits for my book, Under the Henfluence! It’s getting to the point where I’ve finished most of the big steps to get the book done but am too far away from the release date in March 2023 to have more to do for it. I’m trying to start on another big writing project to keep me occupied for the next few months. It’s what my brain needs.
But that’s not the only big project on the horizon. It’s finally time to upgrade the chicken coop and after months of talking about it, I’m making plans in earnest! Our original coop is sturdy and has kept the girls safe. I’m thankful for that! But since we can’t free-range them unless I’m there on hawk watch anymore, it’ll be nice for them to have more space. (And me to have more space to add a few more chickens to the flock.) It’s going to be a big undertaking and there are a lot of steps to go—like deciding between the handful of coop designs I like—but it feels good to make this a priority. My hope is to have it all finished by next spring at the very latest.
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If you liked this email, please share the newsletter with a chicken or animal lover in your life! As always, email me at underthehenfluence@gmail.com with any tips or comments. See you next month.
-Tove