© Louis Laferriere Replicas of the sign can be purchased through Laferriere's store, Montage, in Key West or at www.montagekeywest.com.

If you’ve ever been to Key West, you know that chickens are everywhere in the city, strolling the smaller lanes off the main drag of drunken debauchery known as Duval Street, laying eggs in hidden nooks in the cemetery, even joining diners at the tables of Rick’s Blue Heaven. There’s even a shop called The Chicken Store, run by a chicken rescuer, that sells chicken-related objects from T-shirts to— no kidding—real chicken poop.

The birds have a long and controversial history in the city, and are both reviled and revered by its citizens. “These chickens will crow just any time, and the hens go around and tear up the garden,” says assistant city manager John Jones. “But some people like them because they keep the roaches and the scorpions down.”

The chickens are such prolific breeders that for a while people were capturing them in their own backyards and throwing them over the fence of the Sonny McCoy Indigenous Park wildlife preserve, forcing the city to put up a sign that’s since been duplicated into a souvenir which may be familiar to those lucky souls who’ve had a chance to waste away in the tourist shops of Margaritaville: “Please do not drop off chickens at this location. Transport to animal shelter on Stock Island.”

A few years ago, the city contracted with a local barber and fowl expert to catch a certain number of chickens annually. But the chicken catcher figured out he could make better money in the private sector; now he catches chickens for citizens who want them out of their yards.

As for the animal shelter on Stock Island, not many chickens come in these days, says Gwen Hawtof, president of the Florida Keys SPCA. “We used to hold some chickens, but not so much anymore. We do get a few left outside sometimes, and they just sort of hang out here on the property,” says Hawtof. “We have a group of chickens and ducks who live here, but then we have a lot of hawks overhead too, and they tend to keep the population at the same level.”

There’s been controversy of late because the chicken catcher was supposedly taking the birds he’d captured to a sanctuary on the mainland—but Jones says the chicken rescue contingent has doubts that the place actually exists. He’s planning a road trip to go and check out the place himself to make sure the chickens aren’t actually bound for a sanctuary known as Perdue.

Chickens are part of the history of Key West, says Jones, who’s been on the island since 1944. And though he thinks they’ll continue to be an issue for a while, they aren’t the biggest problem anymore.

“Iguanas,” he says. “They aren’t a crisis in the city yet, but they’re taking over in the upper Keys. People buy them at a few inches long and then let ’em go once they hit two feet. But at least they eat chicken eggs.”