An animal welfare officer and a Eugene police officer responded and rounded up the birds, ABC News reports.
The man who allegedly dropped off the chickens is Louis John Adler, 66, according to police. He wasn’t charged, but was instead issued a notice which said he was being “trespassed from the location,” police said. This means he was escorted off the property and faced being charged with trespassing if he returned.
Police said they couldn’t release the reason why Adler is allegedly angry at the department.
ABC News sought comment from Adler and the Department of Revenue but neither was available for comment.
The chickens, released in the building’s lobby, were unharmed, The Register-Guard reports.
Agency spokesman Derrick Gasperini said employees have had past dealings with Adler, who was “frustrated with the outcome.”
He gave no details about the reasons for Adler’s frustrations with the agency.
The chickens are now at the rather cramped First Avenue Shelter, where they’ll stay for a while, The New York Daily News reports.
“This time of year, definitely in our cattery and our kennel we’re full,” Cary Lieberman, executive director of the Greenhill Humane Society told an ABC affiliate. “We are now full of chickens as well. It’s not often we take in seven chickens at once and certainly not under this circumstance.”
Adler, visited by a reporter at his property in Creswell, would not say why he released the birds in the agency’s lobby, but added it was a “spur of the moment” decision, The Register-Guard reports.
The employees at the tax office are good people, he said, but the “system is so upside down.”
Adler says he has received supportive calls and emails from all over the country in the aftermath of the incident, and has even heard from people he hasn’t spoken to in three decades.
The story was picked up by The Associated Press and soon made its through news outlets across the country.
It’s been too much, and the story needs to go away, Adler said. There are more important issues for people to talk about; including the need for military veterans, the elderly, and children to be better cared for.
The chickens have been put up for adoption, and they are “friendly and very photogenic,” Lieberman told the Guard in an email. People are already calling about adopting the birds, and one place, Eugene Backyard Farmer, a farming supply store, has offered to shelter the birds at its “luxury chicken hotel,” The Nesting Place.
