Editor’s Scratchpad

Thursday, April 26, 2001

A wake-up call
on rooster noise

Is there an urban dweller on this island who, when asked why he owns roosters, isn't sure to take the Fifth Amendment?

Neighbors complain about being woken at dawn by loud cock-a-doodle-doos, and the issue as it's being discussed by the Waipahu Neighborhood Board zooms in on the noise. Cockfighting, having been roundly condemned as cruel and disgusting, happens also to be illegal, as is the gambling that it generates. Yet the argument revolves absurdly around the noise created by the rooster-breeding camps.

"People don't have roosters in their backyards unless they have a purpose," says Annette Yamaguchi, the neighborhood board's chairwoman. Unless anyone can come up with a plausible purpose other than preparing roosters for illegal combat, urbanites should not be allowed to have even one rooster.

--Lee Catterall

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