Surreal Vermont Chicken Doings

An unidentified chicken expert, left, and Barre Town animal control officer Justin Pickel remove a cage containing chickens seized from the property of Kathy Rubalcaba, right, in East Barre on Wednesday afternoon.

JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR/TIMES ARGUS


Police raid the roost in East Barre
Lawyer squawks over 'warrantless search'

By David Delcore
TIMES ARGUS STAFF - Published: October 8, 2009
BARRE TOWN – Just when it looked like the tale of an embattled East Barre chicken farmer couldn't get any weirder, it did late Wednesday afternoon.

Accompanied by an unidentified self-proclaimed chicken expert, police swooped in and scooped up four apparent roosters – three of them too tiny to crow – and drove off, leaving Kathy Rubalcaba to ponder what had just happened.

It was the latest maneuver in the fight over Rubalcaba's homegrown chicken-and-egg operation on her quarter-acre lot, which has raised the ire of neighbors in the residential area who have had to listen to her roosters' constant crowing.

The rooster raid capped a dizzying day during which Rubalcaba's lawyer, Daniel Richardson, said he sought without success to persuade town officials to wait for today's hastily arranged 1 p.m. hearing in Washington Superior Court before taking any drastic action. The focus of today's hearing will be a newly filed motion that Richardson had hoped would prevent the town from enforcing its Sept. 17 order limiting Rubalcaba to a single rooster until after her appeal is heard.

However, when two police cruisers and a van pulled up outside Rubalcaba's Church Street home shortly after 4 p.m., it was clear that Richardson's efforts to postpone matters had failed.

Police Chief Michael Stevens and two of his officers – one wielding a digital video camera – were joined at the scene by the town's animal control officer and a woman who would identify herself only as a "representative of the town" who professed to know something about chickens.

Asked for a warrant, police said they had none and were acting solely on the order of the selectboard. Based on that order, police ignored Rubalcaba's repeated requests that they stay off her property and out of her chicken coops and pens. They politely but firmly and repeatedly instructed her to step aside and allow the woman, whose name and qualifications they would not disclose, to inspect her chickens.

At one point Rubalcaba insisted the woman might track contaminants into her chicken coop, prompting the town's expert to tie plastic shopping bags around her shoes as a precaution. A visibly frustrated Rubalcaba was prevented by police from accompanying the woman into at least one of the enclosures that house chickens on her property.

It was a surreal scene that played out while some of Rubalcaba's nearest neighbors and most vocal critics watched quietly from a distance and a couple of her friends peppered police with questions from close range.

"How many guys do you need to take two roosters?" Tom Taylor asked. "They brought a SWAT team."

Taylor, who raises chickens in Northfield, also questioned the credentials of the woman who was hunting for roosters on Rubalcaba's property Wednesday afternoon.

"They're hens," he said of two smallish birds that the woman placed in the cage that she later drove off with.

Ann Horsman, a self-described chicken farmer from Moretown, also wondered why the woman had singled out the young birds.

"These are chicks," she said. "Unbelievable!"

Contacted at his Montpelier office after the raid that left Rubalcaba with one rooster – her prized Welsummer – Richardson said he was in the process of amending his complaint based on what he characterized as a troubling turn of events.

"This was a textbook warrantless search," he said. "I've yet to come up with a (legal) basis for the town doing what it did."

Attempts to reach both Town Attorney Michael Monte and Town Manager Carl Rogers for comment were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Richardson said he spoke with both men before the raid, but claimed he was unable to talk them out of what he called a premature power play that may have violated his client's civil rights.

"The town is acting a bit like a bully," he said. "What this did is prove a bunch of grown men can intimidate a single woman."

Richardson said Rubalcaba, whose fledgling business is called Layed In Vermont, won't take the town's actions lying down.

"We're going to move for sanctions, we're going to move to have the chickens returned, and we're going to move to have this whole thing tossed out," he said, reiterating Rubalcaba's consistent claim that she needs three roosters to maintain the three breeds that are the foundation of her enterprise.

Although the simmering chicken dispute may seem inconsequential, Richardson said the issues at its core – property rights and due process – are anything but.

"These are the building blocks on which democracy is built and our rights our tested," he said. "This is quickly moving into the realm of scary."

Rubalcaba said the rooster raid was par for the course on a day that began with an aborted attempt to slaughter nearly three dozen roosters she removed from her property Tuesday afternoon to substantially comply with the selectboard's order. Rubalcaba said she took the roosters to Taylor's farm in Northfield, but because the well there hadn't been tested she couldn't have the roosters slaughtered and USDA stamped, as she had hoped.

According to Rubalcaba, the roosters were taken to Morrisville, where they are to be inspected and slaughtered today.