Park Cities woman pulls no punches to save her poultry
http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/columnists/mariana-greene/20111012-park-cities-woman-pulls-no-punches-to-save-her-poultry.ece
Dominique Miller is panicked. She is hysterical or, as she pronounces it for
special emphasis, “hiss-sterical.” As she told the University Park city
secretary, she would sooner give up her children than her chickens. That choice
looms on Tuesday, when she petitions the City Council to revise its regulations
banning the birds.
While wild waterfowl are procured, encouraged and touted as a child-friendly
ornamentation on the town’s parklands, backyard hens are not welcome in
University Park.
“I’ve had chickens since I was 10 years old. They were my pets,” says Miller,
raised in a village near Bath, England. “It never even dawned on me they were
illegal in University Park.”
The warning of doom came several years after Miller, 45, had installed a few
hens in her backyard. She made no attempt to keep them secret. Her neighbors
enjoy them and send their children over to visit with them. Miller threw a
sip-and-see — a current custom for showing off a new baby — for a batch of
days-old chicks, serving tea and lemonade to mothers and their children.
But one spring day, she found a notice of violation on the front door, and
her world was turned upside down. “It’s like taking a big part of me away. I’m
not going to sit back and let this happen.”
Sometime after 5 p.m. Tuesday, Miller will make her plea to the University
Park City Council. Since spring, she has run a low-key campaign to collect
letters and emails of support. She has enlisted local chicken experts, including
Dan Probst, a chicken farmer in Poetry, northeast of Dallas, to address the
council about the benefits of city chickens and to answer questions about
practical aspects of henkeeping.
“I’m in the Park
Cities because I didn’t want to be in a suburb,” says Miller,
who came to the United States 25 years ago to teach preschool. She currently
teaches children’s and beginner’s riding lessons at Rocking M Stables four days
a week. “University Park is a small, old-fashioned community where people walk
their dogs and kids ride their bikes.
“I’m very much an animal-loving, country sort of person. In England, you can
live in the country, commute to the city and not be considered a redneck. But
not here, and especially not in this part of the country.”
Miller will share her letters of support with the City Council. Among them
are sentiments such as, “Chickens do not foul the sidewalks or bark all night as
does man’s best friend. Chickens do not dig up bulbs or other plants or
slaughter millions of wild birds as do our feline companions. Chickens are
quiet, contented and often very amusing backyard friends.”
A University Park resident writes, “I’ve got other friends who live in Dallas
and get such joy from their chickens and sharing the experience with their kids.
It would be great if Dominique’s efforts to advocate for the chickens pay
off.”
“It’s not like we are introducing something we’ve never been exposed to,”
Miller says. “But we’ve got a whole generation of kids who have never had that
exposure.”
Miller says she does not know what to expect at the council meeting. She has
designed a T-shirt and had a handful printed. She hopes her hens’ supporters
will wear them to the meeting to be readily identified.
“I don’t even know what to expect,” she says. “I hope there are 10 or 12
people there in the T-shirts who will stand up with me.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Email Dominique Miller at dominiquem65@yahoo.com.
To find out more about the City Council agenda, contact the city secretary at
214-987-5303 or city-secretary@uptexas.org.
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