she dubbed Mrs. T because of a crown resembling a mohawk -- she awoke to an unexpected surprise: a 5 a.m. wake-up call in the form of rooster crows emanating from the coop she had fashioned from her daughter's swing set. Mrs. T., as it turned out, was actually Mr. T -- a gender mix-up that got the hapless male whisked out of Rich's yard to an urban farm operated by the Southside Community Land Trust. "I didn't want a run-in with my neighbors," says Rich, an avid organic gardener who tends a vegetable patch and grows five kinds of berries. "And I wanted eggs." For Carlson, eating eggs straight from the source is like nothing else. Between March and October, Beatrice, Zelda and Gertrude each lay about one egg per day. The rest of the year, Carlson gets an average of one or two eggs per day from the trio. "I make the mistake every now and then of ordering an egg dish at a restaurant, and I regret it," she says. "It's like eating cardboard. A homegrown egg tastes just like butter. It's fantastic." Emilio DeBess, public health veterinarian for the Oregon Department of Human Services, says his department occasionally sees outbreaks of salmonella associated with chickens in Portland, where hen-free neighborhoods are becoming the exception, not the rule. These outbreaks usually occur around Easter, when families get baby chicks and keep them inside, DeBess says. "Keep chickens outside, wash your hands and don't allow kids under 5