By Tim Sheehan / The Fresno Bee
11/18/06 05:18:18
Troy Celis of Lemoore learned the hard way Friday: don't mess with the district attorney's poultry.
Celis, 47, was at the Kings County Government Center in Hanford to pay a bill Friday afternoon when he spotted what he thought was an abandoned rooster wandering aimlessly amid the courtrooms and offices on West Lacey Boulevard. So, he said, he picked up the bird in hopes of finding it a home.
Turns out the rooster is the feathered property of county District Attorney Ron Calhoun.
Celis said he was frisked, handcuffed and briefly detained for allegedly trying to steal the rooster.
"I thought maybe someone had dumped it; it just looked so out of place," Celis said later. "My ex-wife has a place out in the country with some chickens and a horse, and I thought, 'Gosh, this rooster looks like it could use a home.'"
Chief Deputy District Attorney Shane Burns said Calhoun brought the unnamed rooster to work a few weeks ago to befriend a hen that "adopted" the DA's Office, hanging out nearby for the last couple of years.
"We've got a little dirt area out back where they stay at night," Burns said.
When one of the office staff members saw Celis take the rooster, she told a nearby California Highway Patrol court liaison officer, Kings County sheriff's Sgt. David Jones said.
"The officer talked to him and said, 'You can't take it, it doesn't belong to you,'" Jones said.
The CHP officer was shortly joined by a sheriff's deputy.
"They said I was trying to steal government property," Celis said. "They were getting ready to take me to jail because the chicken belonged to the district attorney himself."
Jones, who arrived later, said he didn't know if Celis was ever handcuffed. "He was certainly detained until we figured out what was going on," Jones said.
Man and bird were both eventually freed.
"There's no crime, no charges," Jones said.
Celis only laughed about the incident a few hours later. "I just think it's funny," he said. "It reminds me of when I was stopped when I was 8 years old for stealing fishhooks from Kmart."
