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Feathers are flying in George where two neighbours have been at loggerheads for more than 12 years over one family's determination to keep their "pet" chickens in the backyard.
The dispute has become so heated that angry neighbour Johan McCarthy even appealed to Western Cape premier Helen Zille and George mayor Charles Standers to intervene and compel neighbours, mother and son Hester and Henk Greeff, of 37 Merriman Street, George, to remove the crowing fowl.
McCarthy claims that for years the chickens, which at one point numbered about 30 "but were now down to five, including two roosters", had caused his elderly mother sleepless nights, and that since he and his wife had moved in a year ago they had also experienced the same "mental torture".
Arguing that a George municipal bylaw makes it illegal to keep chickens in an urban area, McCarthy laid a complaint with the George police in December 2011. The docket is now with the National Prosecuting Authority in Cape Town, where a decision is expected on how to proceed.
While Hester Greeff, who is the owner of the house, said on Monday she was unable to comment because the matter was sub-judice, son Henk says McCarthy is waging a "personal vendetta" against them.
But McCarthy said his family had experienced years' of the chickens' supposed racket.
"In the beginning they [chickens] started screaming, that's the only way we can describe it, at 12am, and they just keep on screaming. The last three years they started screaming at around 3am. It is absolutely impossible to sleep with that screaming," McCathy said.
He said his wife was bipolar, and that often she would wake up crying because of the noise made by the chickens.
A defiant Henk Greeff, however, claims he and his mother are being "terrorised" as part of a personal vendetta.
"He [McCarthy] has been making my life hell. I even came home at 3am one morning from working night shift and he was there making very personal insults about my mother. He is always walking on our property, so I told him that if he carried on doing that I would bliksem him," he said.
"He then went to the police to lay a complaint of crimen injuria. I went to court though myself though and the prosecutor said that this case was ridiculous and it was thrown out."
He said McCarthy apparently had a problem with his family alone.
"One of the other neighbours has huge chickens, and another even had a sheep on his property which was blerring [bleating] the whole time. Yet he says nothing about that. This is a personal vendetta and I am sick of it."
George municipality spokeswoman Debra Sauer confirmed that the mayor had been approached by McCarthy but the matter was now with the NPA.
