The family brought a rooster into the "city limit" in 2012. The city is Portland, the neighborhood is Cornelius, and the story behind the rooster is a bit complicated and involves a traumatic encounter with a hawk. But it all comes down to the family receiving six noise citations over the past five months because of the rooster's crowing. These fines add up to an astounding $3,000. Yes, the whole business seems very unfair when you consider that the crow of a rooster is far more musical than the bark of a dog. Dogs bark at every fucking thing and all the fucking time. And as the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze said in a long interview: Barking is the shame of the animal kingdom. Indeed, this wonderful and famous passage in the New Testament, "Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times," would lose all of its magic, its mystery, its music if it had been: "Truly I say to you that this very night, before a dog barks, you will deny Me three times." If we can live with dogs in the city, certainly we can live with cocks in the city.