I told Maynes that he could step down, then asked the defense table, “Who goes first?”
Reid’s client rose and crossed to the witness stand. Dorothy Arnfeldt wore a tailored navy blue suit. The neckline of her white blouse had a narrow ruffle and showed a tiny bit of cleavage. Simple gold earrings and gold wedding band. She sat with her shoulders squared and her demeanor was respectful, but by no means intimidated. Although Arnfeldt was her married name, she appeared to be of Scandinavian descent herself: fair skin, thick silver-blond hair, strong nose and chin. Her accent was from “a little further up the road,” as my mechanic refers to states north of us, and indeed, after giving her name and address and swearing to speak truthfully, she told of moving down from Detroit when her husband was transferred last fall.
She spoke of how pleasantly surprised they were to realize they could buy a new and bigger house with a bigger yard than they had been able to afford in Detroit. “Then I discovered that we were just a few feet away from a dirty chicken house. And that the owner let them run wild through our yards, too. The lady next door warned me to watch where I put my feet when I walked back where the hedge is, but I stepped in a pile of chicken dirt and tracked it in on my new carpet before I realized, so I went over and very nicely asked her to keep her chickens in her own yard.”
“And what was her response?” Reid asked.
“She said she’d try, but that they were used to roaming around before any houses were built there.”
“Did she keep the chickens penned?”
“Not all the time. And once when she let them out, three flew straight over the hedge to where I’d had somebody dig a flower garden for me. That time, she said chickens were naturally drawn to freshly turned dirt and that her chickens were doing me a favor by eating all the cutworms in the soil. I told her I could do without the favor and that’s when I called to report it.”
“What about the rooster?”
“It didn’t crow only in the morning, it crowed all day long. And those hens! Every time they lay an egg, they tell the world about it. So, yes, I’ve complained about the noise.”
“What about your dog?”
“We have an invisible electric fence, so she stays in our own yard.”
On the day of the altercation, she said that she heard her dog barking and looked out in time to see a chicken come flying over the hedge. The dog immediately pounced on it. “I rushed out to try to save it, but Pixie grabbed the chicken and squeezed through a gap in the hedge with it. When I got through, I saw Mrs. Udell come out of the house with a gun in her hands and she said a chicken-killing dog shouldn’t be allowed to live . . . well, that’s not precisely what she said, but I can’t repeat the kind of language she actually used. Anyhow—”
“Wait a minute, Mrs. Arnfeldt,” Reid said. “Was your invisible fence turned off?”
“It was on, but it’s not set very high. We don’t want to really hurt Pixie, just discourage her from straying. It’s strong enough that she never crosses it when she’s out there alone and unprovoked, but if something like a chicken flies into our yard and gets her all excited, then I guess she just charges right across it.”
“So what did you do next?”
“What I didn’t do is let her shoot Pixie. What sort of neighbor shoots another neighbor’s pedigreed dog over a dumb chicken? I offered to pay her for it, but she wouldn’t listen. Just kept yelling that she was going to kill ‘that damn dog.’ Her words, Your Honor, not mine. When I tried to take the gun away from her, she hit me in the face and we got into it. But she threw the first punch. Not me.”
“Your witness, Mr. Foster,” Reid said.
“Just to be clear, Mrs. Arnfeldt,” said Kevin. “You claim that the chicken flew into your yard, your dog killed it and then ran off with it when you came out so that you and your dog and the dead chicken were in the Udell yard when Mrs. Udell came out with the rifle?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No further questions.”
Francisco stood to cross-examine. “When you were buying your house, Mrs. Arnfeldt, did you look around out back?”
“You mean did I see the chickens? Not really. I thought that little building was a toolshed or something. It was almost dark and they must have already gone in for the night so that rooster could get a good rest before it started crowing.”
“But you did drive past farms to get to Crescent Ridge and knew that there were farms around?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why we bought out there. So that we could live in the country, but I didn’t know that meant I was going to be living in someone’s barnyard.”
Francisco paused. “Six chickens constitute a barnyard to you?”
“Objection!” said Reid.
“Sustained.”
“My apologies,” Francisco told me. “Now on the evening in question, Mrs. Arnfeldt—”
“You mean that afternoon?” she asked. “It was still daylight.”
My clerk looked up with a small roll of her eyes but the rest of us kept a neutral face. We all realized that it was an innocent question. For us, “afternoon” becomes “evening” around three-thirty or four o’clock, a nuance that takes newcomers a while to pick up on.
“I stand corrected,” Francisco said politely without the least trace of sarcasm. “That afternoon. Are you quite certain that you saw that chicken fly over your hedge?”
“Absolutely. And then Pixie grabbed it and—”
“You do understand the penalties for perjury, do you not?”
