Sheriff's Blotter: chicken death leads to arms race

Dave Tomlin | Ruidoso News

A Carrizozo man called for help from the Sheriff’s Office last week “in reference to a dog that ate his chicken,” according to the dispatcher.

There was no helping the chicken, of course. But the man told the deputy who came to investigate that the dog belonged to his uncooperative neighbor, and he was now worried that the carnage might soon go beyond the slaughter of poultry.

“Upon telling the neighbor that if his dog was on his property killing chickens again he would shoot the dog, the neighbor then threatened to shoot him,” the deputy reported.

The owner of the former chicken said he preferred “to seek a peaceful resolution to the problem” and asked the deputy to act as his emissary.

The deputy found the dog owner and learned “that he did in fact have two bird dogs and did find a hole in the fence that separates their properties.”

But the man said his dogs coexisted peacefully with various livestock and had occasionally caught birds without killing them, so he wasn’t sure his neighbor’s chicken was really dead.

Nevertheless, he assured the deputy he wanted a peaceful resolution too, though he also made it clear he was just as prepared for war as the chicken owner.

He said the chicken owner had told him “that he would be shot by his compound bow,” the deputy reported. “He specifically felt threatened when his neighbor told him that the bow would not make noise and no one would know.”

The deputy managed to stand both sides down by counseling patience and providing a list of state laws and rules governing livestock disputes.

Meanwhile another double dog owner also needed some help making peace, but in his case the peace that needed making was between his own dogs.

A deputy was called to the Lincoln County Medical Center where the man was being treated for injuries on his cheek that he sustained when he tried to separate his two snarling pit bulls which “were attacking each other.”

The deputy reported that the skin didn’t seem to be broken, but the man said the dogs got away and he was hoping the deputy could help round them up.

“They are not aggressive towards others, just to each other,” advised the man in the hospital with antiseptic on his injured cheek.