A Word About Chickens

As promised A Word About Chickens...

As I mentioned yesterday there are 2 defining characteristics about Kauai, the first is the persistent red dirt and the second are the chickens (which if not persistent are certainly bountiful.) The chickens are every where, on the side of the road, at the park, at the Secret Waterfall, in the parking lots, at your resort, on the golf courses, browsing at the Farmer's Market, inside the stalls at the farmer's market, behind the tables at the farmer's market, everywhere. We are talking pigeons in Central Park. At Secret Falls we saw them in the trees.
The roosters have no concept of crowing in the morning, oh no, they crow all day and all night whenever they feel like crowing. As you drive down the road (with the top down) you will hear several roosters crow as you pass by.
There are conflicting stories about the reason for the prolific number of the chickens. The first one we heard was that the Polynesians brought them to the Island for food and there are no natural predators on Kauai. In the 18th century when mongoose (mongeese?) were brought to the Hawaiian islands to control the rat population in the sugar cane fields, inside the cage that was sent to Kauai there was a mongoose that decided to bite the dockworker so said dockworker tossed the cage into the ocean and the mongoose drowned. No mongoose means more chickens than the other islands.

The other story is when Hurricane Iniki hit Kauai it set free the chickens that people were keeping for eggs and the people could never round them all up and the chickens just took over.

I find the hurricane story less romantic and so I tended to think it is probably the real story, but Moose insists that there are too many chickens for them to have been set loose only 16 years ago. Perhaps it is a combination of the two?

All of these chickens brought many questions. To whom do the chickens belong? If I harm one in a national park am I committing a crime? If I am hungry can I just catch a wild chicken and eat it for supper? Do people collect their eggs? If I catch one will it be tame like Pam's chickens or will it peck me to death in a reenactment of a scene from "The Birds?"
***update***
That last one disturbs me a little. This could be really dangerous if it did happen. I suspect the chickens if organized could take control of the Island in a matter of days. Those lobbying for Hawaiian independence may use them as a mercenary force. It could be a horror movie "The Chickens of Kauai - the tourists thought they were cute - muahahahaha!"