Monique Watts decided to get chickens for her Buffalo backyard when she ate fresh eggs at a friend’s home in New Mexico. “The mental factor of sitting among chickens is amazing,” she says. “It brings you into a completely different world of sound and movement and texture.” Last July, she bought five hens and custom-built a coop for them in her West Side backyard, but not before doing a lot of research. She looked up city law, found it was legal, and went ahead with her plans. But what she had found online was an outdated document. Due to an amendment in 2004, it’s unlawful to have fowl in Buffalo.

More than a month ago, I wrote a piece about some Lower West Side delis whose owners told me that Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis had bounced checks in their stores.