Neighbors' chickens ruffle feathers in Bishop

"They're like vacuum cleaners," Smith said. "There isn't a bug or a spider out here."

But not everyone was enamored of the industrious exterminators. A neighbor of Smith's in the J Diamond mobile home park complained to city officials, pointing to a 1966 ordinance that prohibits "any poultry or animal yard" within 100 feet of a residence. Smith replied that the ordinance applied to commercial chicken yards, not pets.

"I know some people will say, 'This is just about a few silly chickens,' " Smith said. "But there's a lot more to it. It's about our basic freedoms. It's about being told what you can and cannot do .... We're a rural community .... What's the big deal about having a couple of chickens in Bishop?"

The big deal is that Smith is a City Council member. Her refusal to get rid of Lucy and Goose based on her interpretation of the law struck some as an abuse of power. Others, mostly chicken owners who worried that their coops' days might be numbered, backed Smith.

In January, the City Council took up the issue. At a nearby public hearing, the boss of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which all but colonized Bishop and the Owens Valley to siphon its water, was explaining the agency's plans for the area.

Nevertheless, chickens drew one of the biggest City Council audiences in memory.

Bishop's birds have stirred an emotional debate that goes beyond domesticated poultry. It's caused this Eastern Sierra town of 3,600 to examine its identity: Is Bishop city or country? It's pitted natives against transplants derided as "flatlanders," and uncorked resentments rooted in the long-ago water grab.

"It caught me off-guard," said Mayor Jeff Griffiths, who recused himself from the matter because of a conflict of interest: His son once kept chickens for a 4-H project. "I can't go to the grocery store without people stopping me to ask about chickens. I ran an ultra-marathon and when I passed the aid stations, people asked: 'How's the chicken issue going?' "

No one knows how many chickens there are in Bishop. A century ago, the Owens Valley was fat with poultry and egg farms, and Bishop was the hub of the industry. Merchant G.H. Dusenbery built an egg ranch and packaging plant three miles west of town where 3,000 hens produced an average of 1,650 eggs a day.

"It's a foregone conclusion that as Owens Valley's new development progresses a host of hens will be sitting on top of the world and the eggs will be rolling everywhere," a 1928 story in The Times predicted.

Today, Bishop is a paradox, both city and country. To the west, the Sierra looms like a cathedral. To the east, the Owens River runs thick through the dry landscape like an artery pumping blood through dead tissue.

Within Bishop's 2-square-mile city limits, it's a different story. Main Street is traffic-choked and homes in cozy neighborhoods sit on standard 50-by-100-foot urban lots. With only 2% of Inyo County privately owned — most of the rest is federal land — attitudes toward personal space are deeply ingrained.

"There are people who'd like to go back to the days when we had no sidewalks or gutters and no fences and you could see your neighbors," said Frank Crom, 70, a former mayor and council member and a vocal opponent of chickens. "But times change .... We're so jammed in together."

Generalizations are tricky, but the anti-chicken people tend to be older folks and natives concerned about noise, disease and property values. As for the other side, younger people with children, or those who moved to Bishop looking for a faint echo of Thoreau's Walden, find the daily offering of fresh eggs to be transcendental — and delicious.

"A lot of people like myself feel we're a rural community," said Pete Watercott. "It's what I love about Bishop."

Watercott, 58, is a walking daguerreotype, cowboy-lean in straight-leg denim and boots, with slicked-back hair and a handlebar mustache. Better known by his stage name, Fiddlin' Pete, he has been performing western music at events along the Eastern Sierra for more than 30 years.

"When people ask me, 'Where you from?,' I tell them that's a loaded question," Watercott said. "Technically, I'm from Minnesota. But if I say I'm from Bishop, the natives will say, 'Pete, you may have lived here for 30 years, but you're not from Bishop.' "

Watercott, a skilled carpenter, and his wife Kathryn Erickson have fashioned a country oasis on their double lot within sight of Main Street: Fruit trees and a greenhouse. A tiny vineyard from which they produce wine stored in an underground cellar. A burbling fake creek and pond loaded with bluegills and bass.

Then there is the chicken coop — a spacious two-story cottage with a roof. It currently sleeps seven.