Sometimes people take their chickens a little too seriously.

An attorney for the local activist known as the “Chicken Man” said Tuesday that he filed an emergency motion to fight the man’s eviction minutes before he killed himself by blowing up his house.

Andrew Wordes set off the blast on Monday as marshals were preparing to kick him out of the Atlanta-area house that was in foreclosure, a last act of defiance by a man who seemed to relish fighting the government.

“This was the first step of our larger legal battle to keep his home,” said Wordes’ attorney, Ryan Strickland. “He had options. He had a way out. And he had a good case.”

Strickland said he met Wordes last week and pledged to help him avoid eviction. The legal filing on Monday wasn’t going to resolve the case, he said, but it was an important step to stop the eviction from going forward.

“It’s overwhelmingly sad,” said Strickland. “It’s one of the most stressful things someone can go through – the prospect of losing your house and finding somewhere else to live. I can only imagine what he was feeling.”

Wordes had become well-known for his fight to keep poultry, goats and pigs at his home in Roswell, Ga. Former Gov. Roy Barnes took his case against the city to court, and he attracted far-flung supporters who read about his case online.