Staff and customers at Scrambl’z Diner on East Dunne Avenue
noticed a rooster strutting around the Chevron gas station across
the street from the restaurant last week, and now the bird has
crossed the road and taken up residence on the diner’s
property.
Morgan Hill – Staff and customers at Scrambl’z Diner on East Dunne Avenue noticed a rooster strutting around the Chevron gas station across the street from the restaurant last week, and now the bird has crossed the road and taken up residence on the diner’s property.
Last week, someone reported to the Morgan Hill Police Department they had seen a person leave a bird at the gas station.
Scrambl’z manager Joleen Coons has now named the bird.
“We are actually having a huge debate about whether it is a rooster or hen, and I think it’s a hen, so I named her ‘Fancy,’ ” she said. “We went to the feed store and got her some of her own food, so we didn’t have to feed her bread, and we give her a little water … She’s welcome to stay around as long as she wants to.”
Coons said she and her staff have seen customers try to catch the bird and when it wanders back across the road to the gas station, they’ve watched people try to catch it there.
“She’s just a bit skittish,” she said. “It’s pretty funny to watch people chasing around after a chicken.”
MHPD Animal Control officer Daniel Pina said the Scrambl’z rooster is not the only one homeless in Morgan Hill.
“There are a lot of roosters popping up in the city,” he said. “We’ve had two at Creekside Village, on of them may be the one at Scrambl’z, it’s the same general area. There’s a third one now in the Venetian Way/Tahoe Way area, it’s up on a two-story building, so I haven’t been able to get it.”
Pina said he met with Animal Damage Management to come up with a plan to remove the roosters from the city to the San Martin Animal Shelter.
“It’s really, really hard to catch them,” he said. “You can’t tranquilize them, because it would kill them, and we don’t want to do that. But when they are approached, they fly away.”
Pina said because the area around Scrambl’z and the Chevron has a lot of traffic, he’s worried about running around after the bird to catch it, fearing it would run into traffic and cause an accident.
The rooster in the residential neighborhood is apparently more of a nuisance than the one at the restaurant. Pina said the bird crows several times during the early morning hours, waking people up.
The birds are probably surviving on bugs and grains they find, Pina said. They are not dangerous, although they can peck and scratch, he said, but they are not usually aggressive. Feeding them “people food” can be bad for them.
Pina said people may be bringing them in from the county and “dumping” them in Morgan Hill.
“I know the county is making some stricter rules, there are some crackdowns, but the rules are not yet in place,” he said.
Cockfighting is illegal in California, and within the last year, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office has raided several locations where the fighting birds are kept.
