Love is for the birds, says a lonely widow

A 63-year-old widow has vowed to hold on to the pet chickens and ducks that share her home in defiance of the government's ban on keeping backyard poultry.

She said yesterday that she treated the two chickens and two ducks that live in her public flat on eastern Hong Kong Island as if they were her own children after she was abandoned by her daughter 10 years ago.

'Of course I'm not turning them in. I have kept them for more than 10 years,' said the woman, who asked not to be named. 'I'm alone, facing four walls in the flat, that's why I am keeping small animals.'

The ducks are survivors of a flock of eight she bought more than a decade ago. She also has a silky chicken and a yellow chicken which she bought from a wet market for more than $40 each nine months ago, after the death of a pet hen. She said she was heartbroken to learn only yesterday that the hen's partner - a rooster she called 'Ah Lui' - died two years ago, soon after she was forced to give it away because of complaints about its crowing. 'I didn't know he had died. It's very sad. I loved him very much.'

She now kept only female birds, as these were quieter than males.

After the government's ban on backyard poultry was announced this month, the woman began keeping her pets in a large cardboard box during the day, to keep them from view. Previously, she would let them run about in her small kitchen, with newspaper spread on the floor.