We had a small flock of Guinea hens. Though we live just past the orange 
line on a real estate advertising map that runs north-south across the 
width of Long Island and distinguishes urban from rural we have chicken 
laws. The chicken laws came before the all night golf course and at some 
milestone following after the Magna Carta. The essential law is that 
unless we are official designated 'farmers' we can have a maximum of 6 
chickens and zero roosters. It also seems we can have a horse but 
considering the limitation of space that may prove inconvenient (though 
having a horse live in the garage is my profound experience of horses). 
I do not know as yet the law on Jackasses, but Kathy wants one... more. 
Oddly, Guinea hens which are very loud and contentious there is no limit 
on how many of those we can have. They are good, it is said, for control 
of tick populations. At the time we thought it important to save our 
offspring and ourselves from the rampant infestation of bloody ticks. At 
one time we had fifteen chickens, for a while Kathy was known as the 
Chicken Lady and whenever any of our neighbors found a mangled chicken 
running loose (and we live in what has architecturally morphed from 
summer beach colony with dabs of speculation and the odd wealthy 
publisher scion bopped on the nose by Hemingway to working class suburb) 
they would bring it to Kathy... and here and there a rooster in the 
mix... we learned to be paranoid regarding visitations of the Chicken 
Police. Considering that we wish to remain below the radar when it comes 
to poultry politics what roosters we had eventually we gave to a nearby 
farmer who complained about the increased pressure from the urbanites 
themselves complaining about organic processes like manure smells. But, 
Guinea hens, unlike most chickens that I have known, fly and they would 
roost in the oak trees surrounding our property (and I may mention the 
micro-burst twister we had that ripped down more than a dozen oaks down 
the street from us a few weeks ago). I would not exactly say that they 
were free range, like the Prarie Dogs, Iguana and the pet Starling 
became, though our only control of them was feeding. One white hen must 
have felt left out of the chicken affinity group -- considering it was a 
survivor of the racoon wars -- as it in time also took to flying and 
roosting in the oak trees. So there would be this flock of rather ugly 
looking nasty gray birds with one white. I remember one time a mother 
pulled up in her SUV on the street next to our side yard (the one I try 
to keep neat of debris and mowed) and pointed out at our Guinea hens to 
her young children that we raised turkeys. It makes me happy to inspire 
youth to potentials in their future lives. The basis of a good education 
is to realize what one can do with their time if they so desire.

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