Do you know the roosters in your neighborhood?

On the sinister side, Hahn's original proposal back in October claimed this:

"The majority of roosters bred, raised or kept within the city of Los Angeles are used for the illegal blood sport called cockfighting...Cockfighting events promote illegal gambling operations, prostitution, human trafficking, drugs, weapon sales, and attract other criminal and gang activities into residential communities, endangering innocent adult and children who reside there."

How in the world she knows the majority of roosters are fighting cocks and not farm or pet cocks is beyond me. Did she go around town counting them?

Even funnier, if you think about it, is the obnoxious side of her argument: Noise nuisance, negative impact on property values, avian flu and other diseases, even the "broken window" theory of law enforcement and finally the everybody else (in tidy well-run communities around L.A.) are doing it.

The measure going before the council on Wednesday requests the City Attorney to:

a) Prepare and present to council an ordinance restricting the ownership of roosters to one per property within the City of Los Angeles, subject to the following exceptions:

1) Any person or entity already having a valid permit for one or more roosters (e.g. petting zoos) should continue to keep and maintain those roosters as long as they have a valid permit;

b) A producer, director or other person in authority in a film, television or other media production, should be able to apply for and receive a permit from the City allowing a rooster or roosters to enter and remain in the City for the limited purpose of being used in a film, television or other entertainment production. The rooster or roosters should be removed from the City at the completion of each workday once filming ceases for the day or night;

c) Persons who having a legitimate and lawful reason to keep up to three roosters on their premises and can satisfy the City that said roosters will not cause significant nuisances to their neighbors should be allowed to apply for a permit from the Department of Animal Services;

d) Anyone who owns up to three (3) roosters as pets at the time of enactment of this ordinance should be allowed to apply for a "grandfathering" permit, which would allow them to retain these specific pets for the remainder of their natural lives, providing that such pet roosters are microchipped for permanent identification and are maintained in accordance with other sections of the Municipal Code governing the possession of fowl within residential zones of the City.

My favorite idea is the one about allowing up to three roosters if the owner microchips them. You can almost see the lines in front of veternarians offices of people holding their roosters and waiting to have them microchipped.

The images that keeps running through my warped brain are ones of Nero fiddling while Rome is burning and Marie Antoinette looking out from the palace at the rabble taking over Paris and suggesting, "Let them eat cake."

And maybe that's what we have here, the Marie Antoinette and Nero of L.A. I like that idea a lot. Any suggestions for the historical characters for the rest of the city's governing body? 

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