A rowdy rooster named Maurice will learn Thursday if he can go on crowing as usual, after unhappy neighbours filed a lawsuit denounced by critics as an attack by urban interlopers on the traditional sounds of the French countryside.
Maurice's owner, Corinne Fesseau, told a court in Rochefort, western France, in July that nobody else had complained about the noise at her home on the picturesque island of Oleron, except a couple of retired summer vacationers.