A lot of what goes on in meetings of the city council and other such august Bull City bodies is kind of esoteric. Technical and, frankly, dull.

But once in a while things get right down to earth. Or earthiness, one might say. Personal, even.

Take last week's city council work session.

Work it was -- running more than three hours, or as long as the past three city council and county commissioners' meetings combined. Nobody wants to talk business in December, but there the diligent councillors were, dealing with finance, crime, water quality and the condition of the streets.

And chickens.

Twenty-five minutes of the council's time was taken up with the proposition to let city residents keep chickens in their yards.

First, it had to be determined whether it was appropriate to hear citizen comments then and there, or put them off until the next regular meeting in January.

It being established that such a hearing before the hearing was permissible under the rules of procedure, citizen Frank Hyman, on behalf of a number of prospective chicken-keepers in attendance, questioned some points in the proposed ordinance revision: whether a chicken facility should require a building permit as well as a chicken permit, whether a chicken fence needs to extend a foot underground and whether produce fertilized with chicken poop is safe to share around the neighborhood.

The talk was generally theoretical until Mayor Bill Bell spoke up with the voice of experience. His grandfather kept chickens in their backyard in Winston-Salem.

"My job was to go out and pick up the eggs," he said. "Chickens had a lot of droppings, too."

Bell's reminiscence opened the door for council member Howard Clement. He, too, grew up with chickens in the yard.

Clement: One of the most unforgettable moments for me with respect to that was the time my grandfather killed chickens.

Bell: I understand that. I killed them. We used to wring their necks.

Clement: And after you wring their necks and set them in ...

Bell: Stick 'em in hot boiling water, get all the feathers off ...

Clement: Yeah, I did all that.

Bell: I did that, too.

Clement: But what my grandfather [did], he had a fence built all around the chicken yard so his neighbors couldn't see what was going on.

At this point, council member Diane Catotti said that the diligent souls who drafted the ordinance revision took into consideration matters such as public health, coop maintenance and smell.

Bell: That's a big problem. I know, I had to clean the chicken coop, and I know how much they do.

Clement: Not pleasant.

That brought Bell back to his initial concern, for those who would find themselves next door to a smelly city chicken yard. When he was a boy, he said, his grandfather's yard was big enough to put smell-diffusing distance between coop and neighbors.

But, he said, in 21st-century Durham yards are smaller and neighbors closer than they were back there and then.

"This is a different day and age," he said.

Indeed, it is. And so backyard chickens are not yet legal and the chicken conversation will continue next month at City Hall.

But it's comforting to know that among those in charge of running our thoroughly modern Durham there is some old time common sense; and that among the august and esoteric there are some plain ol' folks like us.