NEW ORLEANS — It's a mystery residents really can't seem to crack. Where did the chickens in the St. Roch neighborhood come from?
Connie Smith and her husband moved here four years ago and these feathered babies were already calling the neutral ground home.
“They're all over, they’re down here Tonti, they’re over here on Elysian Fields, Frenchman, they’re all over the area, Florida Avenue, they’re not just here." Smith said. "These are our chickens, in our neighborhood, here on St. Roch, but each area has their own chickens.”
Smith added that despite the abundance of chickens, the birds are well-behaved.
“They’re very good, they don’t bother nobody, they don’t fight with nobody, they don’t bite nobody.”
Neighbors take turns feeding the ever-growing flock, and they even have a feeding schedule.
“If I don’t feed them the day before they’ll come underneath my bedroom and they stand there... like mama come out here and feed us, we want our food… I feed them like 4 or 5 p.m. in the evening,” Smith said.
They’re also over on Tulane! But where did they come from?
There are no easy answers. I put my reporting skills to the test when I asked Smith's neighbor, Mr. Clarence what he thought.
"From an egg," Mr. Clarence said.
He says they roam all over, but says they do have predators. "People eat them when they catch them," he said.
Another resident said, "I have been seeing the chickens I want to say for 26 years.”
The chickens are a form of entertainment. After hours of asking where they came from, one neighbor claims backyard chicks got out of his grandparents yard and started their own free range family.
He said, “Well I have seen the chickens come out the backyard, they come out of my mothers house, where they have a little bit of construction yeah so I have a nice time watching them.”
But what about the eggs? Eyewitness News went looking for eggs but turned up short.
As the sun sets, the chickens wander to their nests to turn in for the night. But tomorrow is a new day, and they’ll be at someone’s door asking for breakfast.