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Is there a chook-napper, or rustler, loose in the area?
In Brooks View Heights, Tasman, two of Anton Petre’s chooks went missing just before Christmas. Not a feather or a body to be found anywhere on two acres.
They usually never left the property—but they did sometimes grub in the water-table at the side of the road.
Nowhere to be seen in the area, so the suspicion was they had been pinched. They were very tame – easy to pick up—but if anyone wanted them for Christmas dinner, as old birds, they would be a great disappointment.
Now, a few weeks later, another chook has mysteriously gone missing. And a story has also been heard of a chap elsewhere who, on coming home, spotted two blokes loading his chooks into a car: “Oh, we thought they were wild,” they said.
If you see chooks by the roadside, they are not wild: they belong to someone. And the New Zealand penalty for pinching any livestock is a maximum seven years in jail (Section 220A, Crimes Act 2019).
The only clue in the Brooks View case, probably not connected, was a car key (pictured below) found on the road.
