THOSE FOUR HENS that the five members of the Planning Commission are afraid of would not be running around loose at the mercy of dogs, coyotes, foxes and bobcats around here. They would be in a pen with nesting boxes for the hens, which would have a wing clipped to keep them from flying out. And hen owners aren’t apt to butcher the source of their eggs. Actually, seeing a chicken with its head cut off is the only way to understand the expression. And nobody has outlawed cleaning fish, field dressing a deer or hanging and killing a goat in the backyard.

Chicken litter would be confined to the chicken pen and is a great fertilizer, while dog —— is of no value and is deposited along curbs and gutters.

My family raised chickens for our own use. We children looked after the baby chicks when they came from the hatchery, fed them after they were in the pen, cleaned the pen and gathered the eggs.

During the Depression of the 1930s we were routinely sent to the chicken house to see if there was an egg that our mother could cook along with potatoes, bread and coffee for the hoboes who had to get off the freight trains or be arrested. Watching mother clean a chicken was a great learning experience, too.

The “city slickers” on the Planning Commission and the City Commission need to open up their minds a bit. But thanks for the laughs.