I was sitting in the Kingbird Caf minding my own business when I noticed two stone-faced young men sitting in the booth by the front door, wearing ill-fitting suits and
dark glasses. Before I could open my mouth, Bob Pargeter spoke quietly. The chicken police, he said, reaching past me for the ketchup bottle. They re on a stake-out.
Really? I said. They look pretty sinister. Do they carry guns?
In fact, they do have a licence to kill, said Bob mildly. His finger tapped the bottom of the bottle once and a red blob of ketchup splattered his eggs. But it only applies to chickens. And usually they just confiscate the birds.
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Where do they come from? Is there actually a detachment on a highway somewhere?
No, it s a Chuck Norris kind of thing. You don t find them. They find you.
I remember about five years ago the authorities swooped down on Pam and Grant Miller, a nice young couple who make stained glass in a studio behind the farmhouse and take baskets of produce to the farmers market in Port Petunia every Saturday morning. I thought the problem was all sorted out because the Millers were back at the market a few weeks later selling their eggs again.
No, they never really sorted it out, explained Bob. The Millers just made up a new sign that said Duck Eggs For Sale. The guys in the suits went off to check with their legal department and that took a few years. Now they re back. Maybe the Millers. Maybe& you.
For Pete s sake, I have 12 hens!
There s a lot about agriculture I don t understand and it really helps to have Bob explain the world to me. For instance, do you train for the chicken police at a college?
Oh sure, said Bob. They have an outdoor range that is set up like a farmers market and they have pop-up targets of grandmothers holding baskets of ungraded eggs. It takes a lot of training to identify a serious breach of the federal poultry act.
Sometimes I don t know if Bob makes this stuff up. He has such a poker face.
Actually, he went on, mashing his eggs into the plate with a hunk of charred toast, you don t have to go to the college. All you have to do is really screw up in the regular police force. You know& the chief calls you in and says, Dan, that s the third cruiser you ve smashed up this year. You re transferred to the chicken police.
It s not a bad gig. You get to wear that earpiece with the wiggly cord and you sit around in a black Escalade. And you re safe as a church because no chicken policeman has been injured in the line of duty since the force was created 50 years ago. I know a lot of doctors will tell you that living in an SUV on a steady diet of Tim Hortons double-doubles will eventually catch up with you. Still, the number of fatalities in the chicken police stands exactly even with the number of people who have died from consuming ungraded eggs from small producers like the Millers. And that is zero.
You can get salmonella from bad eggs, can t you? I asked. Bob sighed and pushed back his empty plate.
You know, there s a bunch of things I worry about before I drift off to sleep at night& the price of fertilizer, what s going to happen with the euro, will bird flu make the hop to humans. But I have never once worried about getting a bad egg out of the neighbour s henhouse. That sort of thing just doesn t make it onto my list.
I know I m in the minority here. There are lots of people who think coffee shouldn t be served in a high school cafeteria. They re the same ones who decided we needed a 30-page instruction booklet in seven different languages for a pair of new rubber boots, and tractors with those pictures painted on the hood of all the deadly things you can do with them.
The young men rose to go, glancing casually at our table before they left. Bob raised his eyebrows.
Did you see the way they checked you out, Dan? You must be on their list.
