WHAT THE CLUCK! CHICKENS RULE THIS BRONX NEIGHBORHOOD!

If you need a good laugh or just want a happy surprise, visit the 1300 block of Edward L. Grant Highway in the Bronx and scatter some crumbs.

From up and down the Highbridge street, as many as three dozen wild chickens will come clucking.

"They're all over the place," observed Tommy Surdak of Fort Washington Auto Body Shop.

"Did you ever think, in the Bronx?" asked Surdak's wife, Judy.

"Walking up the street like they belong there," said their colleague Danny Quinn.

When not lured by crumbs, some of the chickens roost at the Sanitation Department facility next to the shop. Others prefer a commercial parking lot on the other side, where the more senior birds were once kept in a coop.

The man who ran the lot departed two years ago, leaving the chickens to fend for themselves. They were still better off than the birds at a Wendy's three blocks away, featured by a sign reading, "Spicy Chicken Nuggets."

Some are as dirty as junkyard dogs. All are remarkably trusting for creatures that live outside in even the coldest weather, scrounging to eat.

"They're very friendly," observed Judy Surdak.

One rooster had fine plumage, but Quinn assured me it was no match for one that had gone missing. "The other one is beautiful," Quinn said. "Copper and green."

Another of the roosters crowed. A whole chorus of them welcomes every sunrise here as if this were Kansas.

"They're all crowing," Tommy Surdak said. "And that's a lot."

Quinn looked at the apartments across the street.

"I don't know how those people over there sleep," he said.

Quinn and the Surdaks find chickens waiting at the body shop's front door in the morning.

"They want us to greet them," Judy Surdak said.

At night and during big snows, the chickens seek refuge in a tree across the street.

"They don't bother with the squirrels, and the squirrels don't bother with them," Tommy Surdak said.

Quinn said one hen had hatched a dozen chicks near the body shop entrance. I noted several chickens that were nearly full- grown but still fuzzily lacking in adult plumage.

"My grandkids come down from Vermont, they love it," Judy Surdak said. "I said, 'What do you think, it's only Vermont?'"

Another child who delighted in the chickens was 4-year-old Jack Nuciforo, who fed them chocolate chip cookies.

"They're not afraid of anybody," his father, James Nuciforo, said. "Next thing you know, there'll be squeegee chickens."

The father sent a cell phone picture to his wife's phone.

"What do you have him feeding a pack of dogs for?" the wife asked.

"Pack of dogs?" the father replied. "That's a pack of chickens!"