(Photo by Mr.TinDC)

Mayor Muriel Bowser is looking to close a loophole (coophole?) that allowed some Washingtonians to argue that backyard chickens are legal under D.C. law, WAMU reports.

D.C. officials have long maintained that keeping poultry in the yard is illegal under city law, which prohibits exotic animals but does allow for racing pigeons, parrots, and other “captive-bred species of common cage birds.” There have been attempts to ease the restrictions, to little avail.

It hasn’t stopped some from clandestinely raising chickens, as evidenced by the ones that get loose and the abandoned roosters, hens, and chicks that wind up at area animal shelters.

Rather than doing so furtively, a family in Chevy Chase was relatively open about their chicken rearing, getting written permission from their immediate neighbors and sharing the eggs. But an anonymous complaint to the Health Department kicked off a legal fight that the mayor is now seeking to prevent in the future.

The family, naturally headed by two lawyers, argued that the chickens should fall under the category of “captive-bred species of common cage birds.” They filed a temporary restraining order to stop the city from confiscating the birds, according to the Washington Post. In the end, the Department of Health issued an exemption and a one-year license allowing them to keep the chickens for egg production only.

Still, Allison Sheedy and Daniel McInnis are frustrated that their year is coming to an end this summer without resolution, and at least one other family has also sued DOH, according to WAMU. But embedded in the Budget Support Act is a definitive answer, albeit one that will disappoint all those hoping for a new era of open urban chicken farming. The proposed new language would explicitly prohibit the practice.

“When we sued the city, a large number of people came out of the woodwork either in support of chickens or because they had backyard chickens and were giving us encouragement,” McInnis told WAMU. “Who is it in the D.C. government that hates chickens, and why do they think the people of D.C. agree with them?”

On the opposite side of the coop, the language would allow for ferrets, another animal that is currently illegal in the District to the consternation of a fair number of people who are keeping them as pets regardless of the law.

“I eventually figured out that D.C. is not big on enforcing the ferret ban. “It’s not like New York or California, where they will confiscate your ferret at the border,,” Barbara Bullock told Express in 2015, at which point ferret fans had been fighting to change the regulation for at least a decade. Added Bonnie Russell, co-founder of Washington Metropolitan Area Ferret Outreach: “People think these guys will escape and form feral colonies and endanger wildlife, but they can’t make it three days out on their own.”