Chicken Little next door

The guy that used to live next door to me had a dog that was frequently out in their fenced-in back yard, where it would go into a frenzy of barking and jumping against the fence whenever it heard me in my back yard. It seemed to know I was there even if I was doing something as low-key as lounging in my hammock. Fortunately, he sold the house last year and moved (with the dog).

The new neighbors also have a dog that barks at anyone around, but that dog is usually inside the house. They do, however, appear to have another critter roaming their back yard, but I'm not sure if it's a pet, an egg supply, or an eventual dinner. See, I was out in the yard Sunday with my weed whacker, trying to do something about the hayfield that has flourished back there under my expert neglect, when I thought I saw something moving on the other side of the fence. The glimpse I caught through the quarter-inch gaps between the fence boards didn't look like a dog – and anyway, it wasn't barking, which pretty much ruled out the dog, which would have gone nuts over the weed whacker – so I took a closer look.

They've got a chicken back there. Dark brown feathers. I didn't spot any others, though admittedly I don't have much of a view through the fence, so I could have missed a whole flock.

The thing is, it's probably a violation of either the homeowners' association regulations, or City of Virginia Beach zoning ordinances, or more likely both. I mean, apparently it's OK to keep exotic birds around, like the macaw that escaped from another neighbor last year (resulting in my Bradford pear losing a good-sized limb when the macaw's crazy owner climbed the tree to try to "rescue" the bird), but chickens? That's not exotic, it's livestock, and cities tend to look askance at attempts to house livestock on a miniscule subdivision lot. So I don't know whether to turn them in, or just be happy that it doesn't bark at me when I venture out my back door.