Posted on: Monday, September 23, 2002

EDITORIAL
Roosters just don't make good neighbors

In a perfect world, roosters would crow once or twice around dawn and then give their vocal chords a rest.

But as many of us know, roosters are perfectly capable of crowing all day and all night — when one starts, the rest chime in — and that does not bode well for hardworking folks in need of a good night's sleep.

In light of that, the Honolulu City Council should take seriously a bill that would classify chickens as farm animals, not pets, and require them to be kept at least 300 feet from any residential or apartment mixed-use zoning district.

As it stands, O'ahu denizens are limited to two chickens or roosters in residential areas. Unfortunately, it's going to take a tougher law to solve the rooster noise problem.

And this is not just the case of a few disgruntled insomniacs calling 911. The Hawaiian Humane Society received 4,100 crowing rooster complaints between July 2001 and June of this year. That's nearly four times the number of barking-dog complaints the society usually receives a year.

Keeping roosters out of residential areas would also put a damper on cockfighting, a blood sport that we consider cruel and uncivilized. Although cockfighting is illegal in Hawai'i, keeping and training birds for cockfighting is not.

That's like outlawing prostitution but not pimps.