Chickens have invaded our cities and suburbs. Last spring marked Raleigh's first "Hen-side the Beltline Tour d'Coop," a sort of open house for chicken lovers, centered in the Five Points neighborhood. Adam Walters, the unofficial founder of the unofficial Carrboro Chicken Community, is planning a similar backyard poultry tour this summer in downtown Carrboro.

A graduate student in environmental science at UNC-Chapel Hill, Walters became an urban chicken farmer 18 months ago, and since then a handful of downtown neighbors have joined him and thousands of others across the country.

They are environmentalists who want to shrink their carbon footprints, rebels against the food industry who want to live more self-sufficiently, and parents who want to teach their children about responsibility -- and the reward of fresh eggs. And they're keeping in touch across chicken-wire fences and the World Wide Web.

"The backyard-chickens movement is definitely a growing trend, especially in the urban-suburban areas throughout the world," said Rob Ludlow, who runs backyardchickens.com, a Web site with 2.5 million page views a month and an online forum with more than 3,000 members, and about 18 more every day.

The movement is hatching all over the Triangle, especially in Carrboro and Raleigh, where laws are more chicken-friendly.

"We are seeing more and more chickens here and there in back yards," said Mike Williams, director of Wake County Animal Care, Control and Adoption.

But many communities, such as Durham and Cary, ban them from their city limits, so dedicated farmers have to break the rules.

"Just because they're not supposed to have them doesn't mean that some people don't," said Shelly Davis, an animal control officer in Cary.

A Maryland woman has a blog called Urban Chicken Underground, dedicated to changing municipal laws and legalizing chickens. In Chapel Hill, residents have petitioned the Town Council to relax the town's chicken rules.

In Carrboro, the chickens are getting along just fine -- most of the time.

When Walters needs some feed for his three hens, he walks a block down East Poplar Street, crosses North Greensboro to Southern States garden center, and plunks down $11 for a 50-pound bag of Lang pellets.

"Some people probably think I'm weird, carrying a 50-pound bag of chicken feed through the downtown," Walters said.

Walters and his neighbor Philip Duchastel have had to rescue their chickens from the pound. "It was like getting them out of the slammer," Walters said while standing near Duchastel's makeshift chicken coop.

The coop is an old wooden desk encased in chicken wire with a hole cut so the hens can crawl into a drawer and lay their eggs. Then all the urban farmers have to do is open a drawer and grab fresh eggs.

At supper time, Duchastel lets his hens out to forage for bugs. It's better eating for them, and it makes better eggs.

Duchastel used to let them roam lawlessly during the day, but a New Yorker visiting a relative called animal control.

"People don't realize that the chickens are all right," Duchastel said.

Raleigh and Carrboro allow chickens as long as they're penned.

In Chapel Hill, zoning laws prohibit chickens except in spots near the northern edge of town where suburbia gives way to countryside, and in some southern parts where home sites are at least five acres, near the Chatham County line.

Enforcement is complaint-driven, and the grumbling is fast and furious these days.

"All of the chicken complaints I've had in the last five years have been in the last year," said Maggie Bowers, Chapel Hill's senior code enforcement officer.

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