Accompanied by his attorney, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, and surrounded by a flock of around 50 fellow chicken lovers, friends, neighbors and well-wishers, Andrew Wordes showed up in Roswell municipal court this morning to answer his citation for keeping chickens illegally in his backyard.

Wordes was there only for a preliminary hearing, which normally takes five minutes. But intense media interest in the case brought out television video cameras and reporters from local news stations and CNN as well as a handful of print reporters and photographers.

Beauregard the rooster was the only bird present, but he wasn’t talking. The stuffed rooster was cradled in the arms of a Roswell woman who said he was her first pet chicken and died at the age of 8. “Now I have a dozen,” said the Litchfield resident, who didn’t give her name because she didn’t want code enforcement attention.

When Wordes’ case was called around 9:30 a.m. by Municipal Court Judge Maurice Hillard, Barnes presented a motion to dismiss, and the hearing was postponed until mid-May to give the city prosecutor time to respond.

With huge smiles, Barnes, Wordes and his entourage held an impromptu press conference on the steps of city hall. After the attorney made a general statement, he and the defendant answered questions from reporters, then broadcast crews separated various players from the group to get their own exclusive sound bites.

The media furor has been generated in part by Johns Creek resident Andy Schneider, aka The Chicken Whisperer, who heads the Atlanta Pet Chickens Meet-Up Group and has a business supplying chicks to anyone wanting their own pet poultry.

“It’s a last resort,” Schneider said of calling his media contacts about the case. “We did everything we could to work this out ahead of time, but that didn’t happen.”

Wordes was cited in February for violating a zoning ordinance city legal staff said prohibits keeping chickens almost all residential neighborhoods. His chickens are kept in coops in a fenced yard on his acre of land, and Wordes said his neighbors like the birds, even asking for their surplus eggs.

But someone did complain to the city about the birds, and code enforcers were obligated to respond. After the intitial story about his case appeared in the Neighbor, the issue was picked up by other media outlets and Barnes agreed to represent Wordes in court.

“A friend of mine met him at a chicken show in Dalton and told him about my case,” Wordes said.

Turns out Barnes is a self-proclaimed “chicken man.”

“Since I was a kid, I’ve always raised chickens,” Barnes said to the assembled throng. “And the message is, leave us alone.”

In a nutshell, Barnes said earlier to this reporter after the courtroom door closed behind him, Wordes is not violating Roswell’s zoning law as he reads it.

Additionally, case law says ambiguous zoning ordinances such as the one used to cite his client must be construed against the government and in favor of the property owner. “This is a tempest in a tea pot. Where’s the common sense?”

Roswell restaurateur Bill Greenwood doesn’t know Wordes but came to the hearing to support him. Greenwood said keeping chickens should be encouraged as people become more environmentally aware and the economy continues to worsen.

“Our society is changing dramatically. People should have the ability to have a few birds. It’s like the Victory Gardens people had in World War II when they raised their own vegetables. It’s something that should be explored,.” Greenwood said.

Some who were there to side with Wordes, such as lifelong Roswell resident Bob Miller, took a more sardonic view of the case and the resulting uproar.

“Why would anyone buy a ticket to a comedy club when they could come here to see their tax dollars at work?” Miller asked facetiously. “Chickens are on trial here. That’s big stuff.”