Desperately Seeking Salem

I have watched with mild amusement, reportorial distance, somewhat befuddlement, and then quiet indignation as the issue of urban chickens has raised its cockcombed head again and again in Salem over the past few months.

I have talked to chicken owners, I have interviewed city councilors, and I have spoken with just about every person I’ve come into contact with about the prospect of homeowners winning the right to house 3 hens (not roosters!) in their backyards under very specific conditions.

And even still, the Salem City Council continues to drag its feet on this issue — this time putting off deciding on it and sending it to the city planning issue for further discussion during a meeting last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a groundswell of support for the chicken-keepers and interest in chickens is making them a lot more than just a twee agri-fad to shrug off after the 6 o’clock news.

Strangely, the more I talk to people about whether or not this is a good idea for Salem, the more I discover that people who hear about owning chickens starting wanting to own chickens. And many of them have already hatched the idea in their own homes.

Some friends of ours live just outside of the city limits, and are thus not beholden to the city’s comparatively rigid coop laws (you can own a pot-bellied pig, but no cloven animals. Chickens, by virtue of omission, are illegal). They got their five little black chicks around Easter and have been feeding and caring for them while building their own barn-red, movable coop for the past month or so (the chicks have meanwhile reached the ugly duckling phase, hence the cuter pic).

Watching my friends’ grade school-aged children has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of using chickens as a learning tool. For one, the kids aren’t allowed to see the hens as pets — they aren’t named, like pets are — and are involved at every stage of the caring for them. My friend was pretty reluctant to get the hens in the first place — it was her husband’s idea — but I think she has seen that they aren’t just one more thing she will have to take care of as mom. There the kids are every day, cleaning the mess, gauging the chicks’ growth, preparing the coop for the big move-in.

Now, this is perhaps not your ordinary family. They are all pretty active participants in the food web, often digging their own clams, growing their own vegetables, and getting milk from an actual local milkman.

But I am somewhat insulted by the city council’s reasoning — a way of thinking that I have come across again and again since moving here last December. There is a prevailing attitude that “there is something about Salem” that sets it apart from other comparable cities. Some people cite the city’s state capital status, others site the penitentiary, other talk about the relative lack of industry in the area. But whatever the reasoning behind the “something about Salem” comments, I think they smack of an underlying prejudice against the citizens themselves and their abilities to take an active role in shaping their own lives.

Argument: But Salem is a capital city…

Answer: Chickens are a go in Olympia, and yet, “there is something about Salem.”

Read: We can’t take care of our yards, our families, our urban livestock.

Argument: But Salem can’t pay to enforce the laws, even if we allowed them… it would be a code enforcement nightmare.

Answer: Cities larger and smaller have not seen increases in chicken infractions.

Read: Salem’s citizens are less trustworthy than the 60% of the nation’s cities that allow chicken-keeping.

Argument: But all the city dogs will start barking at the chickens…

Answer: Um… since when is it my fault if your dog barks at my yard?

Read: Put a dog in a story and it will win every time.

I don’t really have any stake in this game. I’m not going to get a chicken even if this measure ever passes. But I will defend to the death the right to argue with fair-minded reason, which is exactly what these chicken people have done, again and again, at these council meetings.

In the beginning, I was pretty sure this was going to be an actual case of “you can fight city hall,” but I’m increasingly thinking that this might be a sign that Salem’s backwater status is deserved.

By the way, just within the past few weeks, one of my favorite writers, Susan Orlean, has started tweeting about caring for her pet chicken.

She lives in New York City.

Question: What’s better than 3-D Imax movies?

Answer: Life.

Sometimes I encounter something in this town that completely flummoxes me, interrupting my day, my thoughts, my mundane activities with its complete deliciousness.

If you read this blog, you know I’m generally talking about food…

But last weekend, I was overwhelmed by the gorgeousness of the cottony fluff floating off of the cottonwood trees that line the Willamette River.  The seeds, encased in a thumbs-width of feathery down, have been floating through the air and gathering at the edges of the paths in Riverfront Park.

If you sit there long enough facing the river, and the wind catches just right, it will start floating directly at your face in almost slow-motion grace.

I’ve read that the result is sometimes a “blizzard of cotton,” but lately, with the sun shining so bright and the wind just kind of fingering through the trees, the result has been this amazing cosmic display of minutely slow-floating fuzz that makes me question my consumption of media and wish I had become a park ranger.

We scooped up some balls of these cotton seeds and rubbed it on each others’ clothing before walking through town. I like seedy hangers-on. I like helping these guys get where they need to go.