Poulty (for Poultry)

There's been quite a squawk happening in my hometown, and possibly yours as well, over whether to allow "backyard chickens" to be kept by the Green Acres types among us—those who can't quite manage to leave the city, but still crave warm fuzzies with webbed feet, a cute pecking order, plenty of farm-fresh eggs, and some free-range poultry when the eggs run out. Also known as "urban chickens," these homely descendants of the dinosaur were given a fine feathered facelift a few years ago by the following fans: DIY maven Martha Stewart, a documentary called The Natural History of the Chicken, and Susan Orleans's New Yorker article "The It Bird." I don't know if there's been any egg throwing down at City Hall lately, but I hope this issue can be laid to rest soon. There were half a dozen "egg samples" in OhioLINK and 71 in WorldCat. I know I can count on my peeps out there to be cooperative and check for this typo in their own catalogs.

(Küken vor dem ersten Ausflug, Eigenproduktion, 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid