Sterling Schlegel and Corey Johnson
Weird things started occurring after SFR ran ace reporter Joey Peters' cover story on the great Eldorado chicken debate, including a fresh stack of white feathers being left at our offices for that entire week with a note that read "XOXO" written in yolk.
The coop had been opened, and both supporters and opponents of the Eldorado Community Improvement Association's proposed measure to prevent residents from keeping chickens as pets went vocal. Clucking vocal.
This Friday, those in favor of keeping beaked mascots congregate in a benefit dance and silent auction dubbed Save Our Hens at the Performance Space in Eld's La Tienda.
"Eldorado's housing association's suing nine of its own citizens for the imagined crime of harboring hens in our backyards," Gershon Siegel tells SFR. "I say 'imagined crime' because the first stupidity in this fustercluck that could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars is that the ECIA board doesn't know how to read its own covenants."
Siegel, a 22-year resident of Eldorado and former publisher of Eldorado Sun, goes on to explain that the pet covenant does not, in fact, prohibit the keeping of chickens as pets.
He considers "the second stupidity" the board's failure to imagine that a chicken could ever be someone's pet, and rounds out the trifecta by pointing out that the ECIA is using the so-called "Eldorado Nine" group's own association dues to sue them.
Proceeds from the night will go toward the legal defense fund of the Eldorado Nine (of which Siegel is a member).
Of course, not everything will be litigious gloom. The night includes "best deviled egg" and "best chicken joke" contests, as well as the musical stylings of Broomdust Caravan.
In Siegel's own words: "We're trying to get the good times back to Eldorado. As it turns out, nothing brings people together better than chickens."
He assures that those good times are in the horizon, as he and the rest of the Nine are "turning broken eggs into the most beautiful soufflé you can image."
Save Our Hens
5 pm Friday, April 5. $20 suggested donation. La Tienda at Eldorado,
7 Caliente Road, 428-0024
