So an appointment was needed to buy a rat. You’d have to really want one.

One consolation for the owners of those San Fernando Valley homes whose front yards face major traffic arteries instead of quiet residential streets is that they have a cheap and effective way to get their message out, whatever it may be.

Some use the opportunity generously by showing off their taste in Oriental horticulture, a practice that also provides an attractive backdrop for passing motorists.

Others indulge historical fantasies, such as the family that has placed Roman columns and life-size statuary around its tract home on Victory Boulevard near the Hollywood Freeway.

Occasionally a written message appears. Sometimes it is just a name, like “The Weamers” on Saticoy Street. But most are mercantile, offering everything from firewood to wind chimes for sale.

The most interesting signs are about animals.

One sign on Sherman Way, next to a new condominium building at Shoup Avenue, reads “Trafficanda Farm.” It is elegant and sturdy, vaguely reflecting plantation style. But it goes with a simple yellow stucco house hidden behind a large, untended yard.

Inside the house, a plump, gray-haired woman was doing a brisk business Monday selling flats of eggs and bottles of “Topanga Quality” honey.

Although she stiffened noticeably when asked to be interviewed, she was willing to answer questions as long as the person asking was willing to buy something. She didn’t see any humor in the name “Trafficanda.”

“It’s always been that,” she said. Even before the traffic.

She said Trafficanda used to be a real chicken farm. Then the zoning changed. The chickens got moved to Moorpark. Just the eggs remain.

Handing back a dime change on a $1.90 bottle of honey, the woman said, “Thank you very much.” Her tone said, “Goodby.”

In spite of Trafficanda’s experience, not all the livestock has been squeezed out of the Valley.

A Tampa Boulevard homeowner has painted “RATS $1 & UP” on a plywood board and propped it up against a tree out front.

There is a bit of mystery about the place. The front yard is overgrown with foxtails standing a good foot high. The front porch is enclosed by a seven-foot hog-wire fence.

Three large dogs slept there Monday afternoon at the foot of a brown plastic couch under a window. In a large rear yard, a black pony stood in a stable. Beside that was a row of small coops that could have been the rats’ home. A doorbell was wired out to the gate. No one answered it.

A small sign on the front door said, “Warning, These Premises Patrolled by an Attack Rabbit.” Below it a handwritten note was fixed to the door next to an envelope containing business cards. “Take a card,” it said.

To do so required penetration of the hog-wire fence. That was done quietly, to not awaken the sleeping dogs.

The card proved as mysterious as the house. It bore two insignias. One looked like a prehistoric bird, the other a dragon with a cobra’s hood. “Rats/Dwarf Rabbits,” was written in script and “Lowest Prices” in small letters. The name “Mary” and a phone number appeared in two corners. So an appointment was needed to buy a rat.

You’d have to really want one.

Several other cottage breeders proved easier to locate but not any easier to approach. Like the woman at Trafficanda Farm, they wanted to show only what they expected to sell.

A young man in a black jacket answered the door of a house on Sherman Way, in Canoga Park, with a sign that says, “Birds 4 Sale.”

In his backyard he had about a dozen walk-in aviaries. There were several tropical-looking birds in each. The man was about to open one when he stopped with a quizzical look on his face.

“What did you say you wanted?” he asked, finally grasping that the visit was not for business.

“I’m very busy,” he said, ushering his visitor back through the house and out the door.

A woman in a maroon sweater answered the door of a house on Lassen Street where a front-yard sign advertised “Hand Fed Cockatiels.” “I don’t need any story written about me,” she said. “I don’t like newspapers. They don’t print the truth. I don’t even watch the news on TV.”

A sticker on her door indicated that she got the truth from BTN, a Christian channel.

She wouldn’t tell her name. She wouldn’t open her screen door either. But Christian charity evidently required her to stand in the doorway as long as her visitor persisted.

She enjoyed talking about cockateels. She said her two sons got her into the hobby when they were only 8 or 9. Now they have married and moved away and she’s trying to sell out.

She recalled with a smile how she and her sons had fed the baby birds every two hours.

“When they’re hand fed they think they’re people,” she said. “They don’t know from cockateel.”

She told a story about a woman who bought a bird for herself which fell in love with her husband. So she came back and bought it a mate. She also mentioned the man who returned a bird because he thought it was sick. But it turned out it just didn’t like him.

“You don’t pick a cockateel,” she said. “It picks you.”

Inside, her birds were calling. She thought one of them just might fall for the man at the door. She was willing to show him in if he was willing to buy.

The arrangement almost worked. But you’d have to want a cockateel.