Apparently, chickens don't like sidewalk chalk. I'm not certain if it really hurts them, or causes them some sort of emotional disturbance, but let's put that question aside for a moment.
I'm wondering why it is that someone this obviously insane is still walking the streets?
And she WILL be walking the streets, for a local judge has allowed her to remain free on her own recognizance until trial, which brings up another strange quirk about life here on Staten Island.
See, recently, the Island has been overrun by a resurgence of wildlife.
In recent years, deer have been spotted here -- and more often shredded by speeding vehicles -- despite the fact that the British wiped out the last, remaining deer herds some 240 years ago. No one knew just where exactly these deer were coming from. After all, this IS an island, and there hadn't been a verified sighting of a deer since Christ was in grade school. It would later turn out that the deer were crossing the Arthur Kill -- a narrow body of water that separates Staten Island from New Jersey-- and sometimes even brazenly crossing the Bayonne Bridge (which connects Staten Island to Bayonne, NJ) in the dead of night. No one knew it because if 50 cars a day use that bridge, it's a lot.
(As an aside, it appears the only use the Bayonne Bridge serves nowadays is as a hazard to navigation; the bridge is routinely struck by the large tankers and cargo ships that ply the Arthur Kill at least once a year).
In any case, the explosion in the local deer population was prompted by EnvironMENTALists, who had fought to protect the whitetail population of New Jersey from hunters for many years. They've done such a good job at it that deer are now turning up in residential neighborhoods, tangling with dogs and cats, giving birth or dying on the roadways, kicking down fences to get at gardens, and rooting through people's garbage cans.
It's enough to make you wish the goddamned raccoons and possums would make a comeback, as these things used to be their bailiwick.
Also, there has been a reappearance of wild turkeys in these parts, which, like the deer, had been hunted to extinction upon this isle so many years ago. The turkeys are now making a nuisance of themselves -- because they're protected, much like the deer -- by tying up traffic and leaving their disgusting crap everywhere. The turkeys are an even bigger menace, because they have chosen the landscape around Staten Island's largest (and best) hospital as their stomping grounds, which probably means more people are injured avoiding turkeys outside the emergency room than are injured in other sorts of automobile accidents.
What does this have to do with chickens and a crazy bitch, you ask?
Here's the rub;
If you deliberately shoot a wild turkey or deer in these parts, you'll get a lot of grief. The City wants to take your gun away, they want to charge you with violations of ever-more-obscure wildlife protection and weapons laws, and they want to fine your behind from here to St. Swiven's Day. Even if you could claim self-defense (some of these bucks around here have massive antlers), the powers that be in these parts are single-mindedly interested in putting your ass in jail and protecting non-taxpaying-non-voting birds and prey animals in order to satisfy a small-but-vocal environMENTAL lobby here in New York.
However, shoot at an 11-year-old for playing anywhere near domesticated chickens, re-loading in the process, and a judge will release you without bail.
Certainly we need to know just what sort of deranged mentality believes that firing a gun at a child is a perfectly reasonable way to settle a property dispute, and then find a way to prevent that sort of deranged lunatic from walking the streets without supervision before locking the crazy cunt up for the rest of her natural life. I would feel no qualms about keeping someone that dangerous, that tightly-wound, that touchy on a permanent rubber-room-and-Thorazine-three-meals-a-day regimen, regardless of expense. It's safer for me, safer for you and your children, and probably safer for the chickens, ultimately.
However, we need to take serious issue with a City Government -- especially a Court System -- that seems to have it's collective head ensconced firmly within it's collective ass.
