Hollywood Freeway chickens

The Hollywood Freeway chickens are a colony of feral chickens that live under the Vineland Avenue off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway (U.S. Route 101) in Los Angeles, California. It is not definitively known how they came to be there, although news stories generally ascribe them to an overturned poultry truck.[1][2][3]

Chickens underneath the Vineland off-ramp became local celebrities upon their arrival sometime around 1970. By 1976, the flock included about 50 of the chickens, described as Rhode Island Reds.[3] They became known as "Minnie's chickens",[4] named after Minnie Blumfield, an elderly retiree who fed them regularly.[2] When she became too frail to feed them, a young actress, Jodie Mann, with Actors and Others for Animals made arrangements to relocate the chickens.[5] Nearly a hundred of the hens and roosters were relocated to a ranch in Simi Valley, California.[6] But not every member of the flock was apprehended, and those that remained spawned a new population. Subsequent removal efforts in the following years all had a similar outcome.

The first colony at the Vineland ramp has spread and there is now a second colony at the Burbank ramp, two miles away.[7]

The survival of the chicken colony and their spreading to another freeway ramp seem to have inspired a short story by Terry Pratchett, "Hollywood Chickens".[8]

Origin

Beginning in the 1990s, twenty years after the colony's arrival, various individuals started coming forward claiming to know the mystery of their origin. Among them:

Nevertheless, there was at least one witness to the overturned poultry truck explanation. A driver on the way to work in Glendale was proceeding south on the 5 Freeway when she spotted three cars off to the side of the road that had been involved in a multiple rear-end collision. Blood and feathers were all over the freeway. On the overpass right above the accident site was a truck loaded with poultry cages, and each cage contained multiple chickens. Below, on the freeway, a smashed poultry cage was off to one side, and chickens could be seen walking around in the freeway median (which did not have walls at the time).

This peculiar chapter of Los Angeles history was going to be commemorated in 1984 with a large mural painted along the north wall of the Hollywood Freeway,[10] but the mural was ultimately rejected for funding and not completed.

See also

References

  1. "Chickens won't leave". Bangor Daily News. August 30, 1973. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  2. 1 2 "Freeway chickens fed by retiree". Daytona Beach Morning Journal. August 26, 1975. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  3. 1 2 "Wily chickens outsmart LA wranglers". Deseret News. December 3, 1976. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  4. "Chickens to be sent to farm". Los Angeles Times. November 16, 1976. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  5. Jack Canfield (1998), Chicken soup for the pet lover's soul, pp. 209–210, ISBN 978-1-55874-571-1
  6. "Chickens to get new home". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. August 26, 1975. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  7. Pete Paterson, Lesley Kelly (2006), The Little Chicken Book, p. 55, ISBN 978-0-9780191-0-5
  8. Terry Pratchett (2012), A Blink Of The Screen, pp. 180–189, ISBN 978-0-552-16773-4
  9. "Hollywood Freeway Chickens have always had a lot of pluck". Los Angeles Times. December 6, 2009. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
  10. proposed mural

External links

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