By Ronn Chesmonde

It’s official: chickens are now considered “legal residents” in Buffalo.

A modest proposal: Stop the chickens!

And if you want to know where the next decline in housing prices is going to happen, look no further than Rhode Island Street on the city’s West Side, where five chickens are coming home to roost even as you read this.

Look, don’t get me wrong: I like chickens.  Some of my best friends are chickens.  But chickens shouldn’t be allowed to live among the rest of us Buffalonians and here’s why:

For one thing, they’re filthy.  They allow their property to fall quickly into disrepair.  They put sofas and chairs on their porches and then leave them to fester through the winter as over-stuffed eyesores.  Some chickens use seasonal lawn decorations that look ridiculous no matter what holiday is approaching.

Also, chickens play their music too loud.  I realize that we all deserve the right to listen to the kind of music that we feel culturally comfortable with but, in the case of most chickens, they modify their cars so that the stereos and the exhaust are capable of waking the dead.  Can it even be called music?  All I hear is dash-rattling noise!

Finally, chickens drain valuable neighborhood resources by having too many offspring.  Just because America provides free public education to our youngest doesn’t mean that every chicken in America needs to fill up an entire classroom with their own progeny.

So I think it is time that we finally stand up to all these politically correct politicians who keep making these moronic decisions.  Because if we don’t do something now, the chickens will be running this town in ten years.

Which, by the way, is exactly why we never should have let the Irish into Buffalo.