Whangarei residents find raw chicken in letterboxes

Paul McKay with a photograph he took of chicken in his letterbox. Photo/Mike Barrington.

Paul McKay rose before the cocks were crowing yesterday morning to ask his partying next door neighbours to turn down the volume.

He returned to bed in his home at 19 Manse St, Whangarei, but later got up when he heard "a racket" outside.

And when he looked in his letterbox he found it filled with pieces of chicken, defrosted but still relatively fresh.

More chicken had been thrown on the lawn at David Macken's house at 17 Manse St, and the flats at 15 Manse St had chicken stuffed in and over their row of letterboxes.

When all the chicken was collected it filled a shopping trolley which, when the Advocate arrived, Mr Macken was standing by to stop children playing with it.

The Whangarei District Council had been called and Mr Macken was hoping it would soon send someone to remove the pieces of chicken before they started reeking in the hot sun.

Mr McKay said the neighbour whom he had asked to be quieter was "a very nice woman".

But he suspected friends of her teenage children might be responsible for the chicken, considering putting it in letterboxes a prank.

The Advocate asked the neighbour, but she said she didn't know anything about it and had found pieces of chicken in her letterbox too.

The Manse St people had called Whangarei police, who didn't respond immediately. An officer later told the Advocate police had received no reports of a large amount of chicken going missing in the city.

The Advocate then heard a security firm was investigating chicken taken from the Regent New World a short distance along the street, but when the supermarket was called a duty manager, who asked not to be named, said he did not think it came from there.

Supermarket staff had heard about the incident and another duty manager had checked it out and concluded New World was not missing any chicken, he said.