Did anybody else find themselves laughing hysterically for no explicable reason at the screaming chickens from the Denny’s Super Bowl ads? Well, you wouldn’t be laughing if you lived on Edward L. Grant Highway in the Bronx, where wild chickens have taken over an entire block of the city. Released from a coop that used to exist in a commercial parking lot two years ago, the chickens are now completely feral. “Walking up the street like they belong there,” nearby human Danny Quinn told the Daily News. They scavenge for crumbs, and are so unafraid of humans that they have taken to trying to intimidate owners of a nearby body shop into giving them food by showing up at the doorstep every morning.
“They’re not afraid of anybody,” said another human witness, James Nuciforo, who is lucky to be alive after passing through the street. “Next thing you know, there’ll be squeegee chickens.”* The terrifying part of this story is not that these wild beasts are allowed to roam free in great numbers, or even that they are multiplying. It’s that they’ve begun to take over other habitats. According to the News, “at night and during big snows, the chickens seek refuge in a tree across the street.” Did you hear that? CHICKENS ARE FLYING INTO TREES. What could possibly be next? “They don’t bother with the squirrels, and the squirrels don’t bother with them,” said one neighbor, who was clearly scared into silence.
But the real question, of course, is how did these guys miss out on this?
Wild chickens rule the roost (and the street) in Highbridge section of the Bronx [NYDN]
*This is a real quote.
