Q: We moved here for some peace and quiet.

Now a neighbor has chickens and the rooster is driving me nuts! He crows all the time, not just at the "crack of dawn". Is it legal to have roosters here? We're on acreage but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

A: Well, you probably are asking the wrong person since I have chickens and that includes a vocal rooster, Mr. Tom. Chickens, including roosters are allowed on Vashon Island in all but a few neighborhoods that have restrictions against livestock. Those neighborhoods are those few on the Island where houses are on city sized lots and folks are very close to their neighbors.

Part of the reason that certain sounds may be a problem for you, is that unlike the city, we don't have much in the way of ambient noise, sometimes called "white" noise. White noise includes things like the constant drone of traffic from heavily traveled roads and freeways. It also includes the hum of large electrical transmission lines as well as the noise of thousands of people talking. Throw in sirens, large trucks, televisions, lawn mowers and other machines in dense areas and you have a real racket.

Living in an area without that ambient noise means you can clearly here everything around you. You can hear bicyclists talking to each other as they drive by, a weed wacker miles away, the train whistle in Tacoma and the songs of birds. Between these sounds you hear nothing. That's part of why most of us live here.

What I suggest is that you quickly learn a method called "re-framing". You re-frame an experience in your mind to change how you perceive the experience. For example, each time the neighbor's rooster crows, imagine the sound of a police siren on top of a street full of talking people on top of the roar of a freeway. Sort of puts it in perspective, don't you think?