Chicken in a field (© Anthony Lee/OJO Images/Getty Images)

Give a chicken a heart attack, go to jail for a year

6/28/2012

Joy McDonald is an animal abuser. That's the charge that the Missouri woman faces after her two Chihuahuas allegedly killed a neighbor's chicken ... by barking at it. According to McDonald's beyond-angry neighbor George Gamblin, the tiny dogs' yelps and yaps startled the "elderly" bird into a Fred Sanford-style heart attack. After Gatlin called McDonald "screaming and cussing," she offered him $30 as compensation. He declined, called the cops and pressed criminal charges. Now McDonald faces a misdemeanor charge, a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, which is 382 times the average sale price of a chicken, according to the Department of Agriculture. "I just can't wrap my mind around it," McDonald said. "All of this because of a dead chicken."

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Are the charges excessive for the crime?