Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Rules are for the Birds



Our next-door neighbors here are good people.
Jim checks on our condo when we’re back north, Sally kept my flowers out back alive and has baby-sat Mamie on occasion. We have different circles of friends but still socialize on occasion.

           Sally is smilingly upbeat, devoted to her grandkids, loves to hang out at the pool, and with black hair down to her waist, may have been a quintessential beach bunny in her day. Under that laughing exterior, though, I have a feeling she has a will of iron.

          Jim is quietly affable and wants little more than to play golf a few times a week and watch sports, but he always seems to be doing someone a favor. He visits an infirm friend in Sarasota several times a week and last year he and Sally went around replacing all the burnt out carriage lights in the complex. He also organized, bought, and assembled, benches for residents’ use. His role in the marriage seems to be to smile and shrug when Sally gets an idea in her head.

           And I want to turn them in to the authorities.

          Since our building went up in 2015, Sally has been tossing white bread to the small black ducks that visit the pond in back of our porches (lanai to you Floridians). This year at the soup kitchen we also have ibis, herons, turtles, and honk-honking mallards. 


          I expect that we also have bird poop, lots of it. Next in our future could be rats and snakes – both of which are known to lurk on the property.

What we often don’t have is quiet. I’ve woken up at 5 a.m. to the sound of feathered feeders honking for breakfast. At any time in the day, since our lanais are immediately next door to each other, if we stand near the screening, birds appear.

Feeding any wildlife is against the condominium rules.

A friend from another building asked me about this and I explained my predicament of not wanting to narc on people I may be next door to for some time to come. She kindly took the issue to a condo board member who suggested that residents could post problems on the condo website, (which would mean the reporter would be identified by the email address).

This gentleman, by the way, lives directly across the pond – with an unobstructed view of the morning and evening feedings.

Oh, and Jim’s on the board and Sally’s a building representative.






11 comments:

  1. My unsolicited advice? Live with it. I'm sure it's not ideal, but in the realm of problems, this seems like a small one, and it's better to maintain a good relationship with your neighbors. If you get friendly enough with her you could perhaps casually mention it directly to her...? (But in Florida you're going to have rats and snakes no matter what, believe me!)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I think you're right on all counts, Steve.

      Delete
  2. Bread is not good for those critters, I'm pretty sure. Hope somebody gets her to stop. :-(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I realize that I'm whining here, but you are right. People shouldn't feed birds white bread.

      Delete
    2. Maybe this is your key to getting her to stop. If you told her that white bread is bad for birds, she might think twice about her "kindness"!

      Delete
  3. you could try tossing a few firecrackers at the fowl whenever they sashy up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Steve makes a good point. They sound like too nice a couple to lose over honking. Ear plugs?? And maybe encouraging Mamie that making birds run and fly might discourage the gathering. Of course then you might get written up for a barking dog. Rules sure are rough. Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That's a tough one. I would continue to emphasize that white bread kills wildlife, too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I suppose you could send Mamie out to patrol! This is one reason we live in the sticks...no neighbors right next door:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Why not just tell those nice people the noise is getting to you, as well as the mess. Maybe they just haven't thought of it like that-they are enjoying it so they might assume everyone else is too? If you never talk about it, you probably just have to live with it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You can't make an anonymous complaint? Being on the board, you'd think they'd follow their own rules.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear what you think.