Cover Story

June 12, 08

Chicken Buster Lester Jorge holds up a “busted” chicken. Photo by Angie Hargot

Miami Code Enforcement Officer Edel Capaz sneaks up on a popular rooster hangout. The birds were not harmed during their capture. Photo by Angie Hargot

Iglesias then brought code enforcement officer Bill Borges in on his idea to create a team of chicken catchers, and, with that, Chicken Busters was born.

Since 2003, the code enforcement group has caught somewhere around 9,000 chickens on the streets of Miami and sold them to South Miami-Dade farms, collecting roughly $16,000 to date for charity. (Roosters sell for $5, hens for $4.50.) The revenue has helped fund the Firemen’s Benevolent Association, the Jackson Memorial Hospital burn unit and holiday toys for needy kids.

Last year, the city’s Code Enforcement Department added its first full-time Chicken Buster, Lester Jorge, to its roster of 50 inspectors. However, Borges takes all new code enforcement officers on a chicken detail as part of their year-long training plan.

On this particular Friday, Jorge and Borges teamed up with code enforcement officer Edel Capaz and two new inspectors, Maria Zeinc and Adan Fermin, both hired in November. The team estimates that they catch up to 30 percent of the birds they “chase.”

“We’re the only code enforcement group that does this,” says Borges, driving his city-issued pickup truck to the site of a chicken complaint.

Borges pulls up to a house on Northwest 30th Street and 11th Avenue, and knocks on the door. A woman peers through her screened window. He explains to her in Spanish that he’s come to catch the wild chickens and asks for permission to enter the property. As four officers in dark blue code enforcement uniforms creep toward the back of the house with giant nets, a neighbor emerges from a back door. She doesn’t look surprised.

“You gonna catch them this time?” asks Shirley Legaree, who called in the complaint.

According to Borges, the chickens began roaming the neighborhood after their owners died, leaving their house abandoned and the birds orphaned. Although it is legal to keep up to 15 hens in a cage big enough for them to roam around, roosters, their noisy male counterparts, are illegal throughout the city.

“They’re accumulating,” Legaree explains. “They’re having babies and leaving eggs in our yard.”

Within moments, the code enforcement officers chase the chickens around the two properties. The birds flee and flutter onto nearby fences, squawking and flailing violently, as Borges hollers to his officers in Spanish.

“Maria, don’t be afraid!” he yells as she musters courage to swing the large net over her head to trap the bird. She misses.

As the sweat pours down their faces, the officers dart around corners, yelling strategies to one another. Once they trap the chickens in the nets, they grab them, hold them up by their feet and quickly shove them into orange plastic cages in the back of the trucks.

“There will be plenty more,” Borges says, wiping the sweat from his brow. He’s right — the team will continue chasing the wild birds through the neighborhood for another five or six hours.

Spring chickens

On the way to the intersection of Northwest 14th Street and Northwest Second Avenue, another area overridden with the stray birds, Borges explains the fate of Miami’s captured chickens.

“We used to take them to a couple of farms,” he said. “But [the farms] started to get picky, saying they didn’t want the small ones or ‘no roosters.’ Then we found the farm where they go now, and [the owner] said, ‘I’ll take anything as long as it’s for charity.’ She likes our chickens because of what they eat. They have hearty immune systems. They’re strong.”

Borges tells chicken-busting war stories, tales of busting up cock-fighting rings and memories of finding abandoned houses overrun with hundreds of chickens.

“When there’s a lot of them, we assemble a crew,” he says, stopping his truck in front of an apartment complex on the chicken-ridden street. About a year ago, he recalls, his team captured more than 700 chickens on this very stretch of Miami road.

“As you can see, they’re back,” he adds, because with the spring comes a whole new crop of chickens.

Across the street, a black cat prowls after a chicken that obliviously pecks around a yard, then takes off when the officers, nets poised high over their shoulders, chase after a cluster of chickens nearby. A couple of residents sit in folding lawn chairs just a few feet away watching the cartoonish scene unfold. They help by pointing out to the officers where the birds have fled to: between cars, down alleyways, around corners.

The Chicken Busters run through alleys, howling instructions at each other. They scoop up the wild birds, sometimes two at a time, as the chickens cluck wildly.

Grasping a chicken by its feet in one hand, Jorge scales a fence to get out of an empty city-owned lot and leaps into the back of a pickup.

“They got diseases, right?” asks a resident who goes by the name of “Solo.” Later, Borges explains that wild Miami chickens, which live on a diet of rather nutritious pests, are actually disease-free, although he wouldn’t eat one.

“The, umm, ‘foreign’ locals — they take ’em and they eat ’em. That’s the way I understand it,” neighborhood resident Robert Jason said. “It’s a good thing they’re catching them. They’re outside animals.”

Another resident, Billy Downey, says he also knows a guy who eats the wild birds.

As the officers chase huge congregations of roosters through apartment buildings and alleys, the birds sail over fences, crash-landing in neighboring yards.

Staying abreast

“We treat the birds with a lot of respect,” Borges says, as Jorge cares for a large scratch on his arm, the blood shining brightly in the afternoon sun.

Once residents call with complaints — which come from as far as Homestead, Perrine and Opa-locka, all out of the team’s jurisdiction — Jorge usually follows up on the calls. Then code enforcement officers can write citations fining individuals up to $250 a day for harboring chickens.

Although the Chicken Busters are not police officers, the team sees its share of crimes. In some of the rougher parts of Miami, Borges says, he’s walked into drug deals and gang activity. “I say, ‘Relax I’m just here for the chickens,’” he recounts. “We try to get in for the complaint and get out.”

Responding to a complaint at an Overtown residence, Borges holds up the captured prize and points out where cock-fighting organizers remove the claws, or “spurs,” to convert the birds into sparring partners for fighting roosters.

“Do you want to touch it?” he says, holding the bird out upside down by its legs, and laughing at a ghastly expression. “What, are you chicken?”

The department has captured as many as 220 chickens in a single day. During the early days of the Chicken Busters, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz came out and chased the birds around the city with a giant net. He even caught a few, Borges says.

One woman who lives on Northwest Eighth Avenue has taken a liking to Jorge, Borges says, and catches the birds for him when she can. On this occasion, as Jorge leaves with the roosters in his grasp, the woman, standing in her nightgown in her front yard, introduces him to Cuckoo, a young white chicken cradled in her arms like a baby. 

“You’re not going to get rid of the problem,” Borges said on his way back to the city’s code enforcement office. “It’s a transient city, and with so many people coming in, at best, you can control it.” The team was preparing to break for lunch before responding to a foreclosed property in Allapattah that reportedly contained 100 chickens. They’ll have Cuban food, he said. “Chicken? Oh yeah. I’ll order chicken. You ever had a chicken steak? Pechuga. It’s the best.”

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com