Not long ago, Penn Alexander realized the balance of nature in his Old Town Key West neighborhood was definitely out of whack.

Armando Parra, left, formerly the official chicken catcher of Key West, shows an indigenous fowl to Penn Alexander and a lovely "chick." (Photo by Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau)

One evening, when he was listening to a vintage Eagles CD in his hundred-year-old cottage, Penn glanced down at the plastic cat crate that housed a wounded Key West chicken he’d rescued from a marauding hawk. There on top of the crate snoozed his large gold tabby cat, clearly uninterested in the feathered inhabitant and what should have been their predator/prey relationship.

In Key West, however, most relationships involving chickens transcend traditional boundaries. The island’s indigenous poultry, probably descended from roosters bred generations ago for cockfights and hens kept for eggs, roams historic Old Town at will. Private cars and taxis stop to let chickens and their babies cross the road, visitors coo and cluck as they snap photos of the meandering fowl, and roosters can be heard crowing not just at dawn, but whenever they feel like it.

While most Key Westers accept the chickens as part of the egg-ccentric island they love — and some, like Penn, feed or shelter them — a few anti-poultry proponents claim the population is too noisy and growing too fast.

Joe Liszka, one of the Key Westers who hatched ChickenFest, appears at a city meeting with a feathered friend. (Photo by Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau)

In fact, in 2004 city officials hired a chicken catcher to round up and relocate almost half of the city’s estimated 2,000 birds to a mainland farm. Armando Parra, a third-generation island resident, barber and amateur ornithologist, caught eight chickens in humane traps during his first day on the job — but his new career was thwarted by the efforts of poultry lovers, who freed trapped fowl at every opportunity.

The resultant commotion led to (I am not kidding here) a four-day festival that was quickly dubbed ChickenFest — hatched by some local event coordinators to give chicken lovers something to crow about.

Fowl fanciers flocked to participate, dressing in full-body yellow chicken suits and feathered headdresses, covering their noses with vinyl rooster beaks and donning red and yellow plush chicken-head caps.

“The Original Chickens,” the brainchild of a Key West accountant, cavort during the “Fowl Follies” costume competition that took place during ChickenFest Key West. (Photo by Mike Hollar/Florida Keys News Bureau)

The highlight was a Poultry in Motion Parade that featured 10-foot-tall dancing chickens, a Colonel Sanders look-alike, a flock of renegade roosters staging a “coop d’etat” against hapless humans, and a 12-foot “Chicken Caesar” — a toga-wearing rooster reclining on a chariot-drawn chaise and waving a regal wing to parade spectators. In the face of that kind of support, the poultry population’s “hard-boiled” detractors didn’t stand a chance.

Today, although ChickenFest is no longer held, chickens rule the roost in Key West. The island’s hens and roosters have become the subject of oil paintings and watercolors, giant sculptures in neighborhood parks and locally published children’s books.

If you’re seeking chicken companionship during a visit to the island, stop by Key West’s funky Blue Heaven, a renowned eatery whose fans include famed singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett.

Blue Heaven’s  “breakfast with the roosters,” served in an outdoor courtyard where resident hens and chicks wander freely, features items ranging from lobster and shrimp benedicts to sinfully good homemade pancakes and banana bread.

Or, if you know Penn Alexander, just head over to his place. The little hen he rescued, now named Henrietta, has become a pet whose daily treat is a smidgen of cat food filched from Penn’s orange tabby.

The cat doesn’t seem to mind a bit.