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The Return Of Fowl Play In Ybor City

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: November 12, 2008

Tom Stephens is one of those Ybor City characters, which is saying something in a part of town where being a character is a way of life.

The first time I ran across Stephens some 20-odd years ago, he was dressed as a 10-foot-high black bean. Every few seconds there would be a huge whoosh of foul smelling smoke from behind the bean as he shuffled along in the first Guavaween parade. He was his own personal float. It helped that at the time he was working for Tampa Oxygen and Welding Supply, the ideal place to come up with a giant gas-emitting black bean.

Stephens is obviously someone you don't forget. I mean he doesn't wear those great white linen suits like Roland Manteiga, the late great editor of La Gaceta, used to wear while sitting at his personal table at the Tropicana.

And he never (as far as I know) rode through the streets of Ybor like the legendary Frederick Weightnovel with his Free Love Society followers.

The thing about Stephens is that he actually lives in Ybor, just across the tracks over there where you see all those chickens meandering around on Sixth Avenue. Tourists love the chickens. They take pictures of the quaint doings in Tampa to send back north, and Stephens is glad to oblige, standing there tossing the chickens a little food.

The Rooster Incident

Other than that, nobody really paid much attention to Stephens or the two dozen or so chickens until that incident back in 1997. That's when James T. Rooster, a popular favorite who would sit in a tree and begin crowing about 3 in the morning, signaling the frequent partygoers it was time to go home, went missing.

Stephens found him over by the railroad tracks, obviously the victim of "fowl play." It was likely a dog.

Stephens put together a swell little casket, called up a bunch of friends, and they planned a New Orleans-style funeral the following Sunday down Seventh Avenue.

Over the years the funeral memorial, now called the Doodle-Do, has become an annual occasion in Ybor, with as many as 800 people parading down the street and then over to Stephens' place for a covered-dish party.

Doodle-Do Didn't

There was supposed to be another Doodle-Do last week, but things began to happen and Stephens called it off. Chickens were disappearing, showing up dead throughout the neighborhood.

A trapper named Mike Martinez appeared and said he had received a number of calls. He figures someone has been poisoning the chickens. Martinez said he was sympathetic to Stephens and is trying to work out a compromise. He's planning on removing a few of the chickens and giving them to local farmers, although he told Stephens he will leave three roosters and six hens. None of this is sitting well with Stephens, who plans to protest by staging a march down Seventh Avenue on Sunday at 3 p.m.

I'm on the side of the chickens. They don't make nearly as much noise as those other creatures in Ybor on the weekends, they look more civilized and there hasn't been a hen-pecking incident in the area in years.

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