Chicken Crosses Road, Portland Guy Calls Cops

'This is actually not a prank call,' he begins
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 13, 2014 2:04 PM CDT
Chicken Crosses Road, Portland Guy Calls Cops
In this 2011 file photo, a chicken crosses the road in San Juan Bautista, Calif., where it presumably did not elicit a call to the town's non-emergency line.   (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

It's the kind of story that almost has to come with a Portland dateline: It seems that on Monday evening, a concerned citizen called Portland's non-emergency line to report a chicken crossing the road. Prefacing his concern with, "Hi, um, this is actually not a prank call," the man proceeded to inform dispatch of the chicken, resulting in this conversation, as per the Oregonian:
Dispatcher: "Is it causing traffic problems?"
Concerned citizen: "Yes, it's really trying to go into the middle of the road."
Dispatcher: "Uh ... yeah ... um, is it just the one chicken?"
Concerned citizen: "Just one chicken, yeah."
Dispatcher: "And you're ... is it ... I mean ... are, are people almost crashing because of it, or ... ?"
Concerned citizen: "I had to slow down to almost to a complete stop."

Unfortunately, responding officers saw no sign of the offending chicken, thus leading a police rep to tell the AP that police—wait for it—"were unable to determine the chicken's intent." (More chicken stories.)

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