So I saw Corinna the other day at the farmers market and told her about my desire to keep chickens, and my neighborhood covenant against it.
"Ducks!" she said. "Keep ducks!"
"Ducks?" I replied, a carton with a dozen of her delicious duck eggs (including a pale blue one from Cutie the Duck, pictured here), which I especially like to use for baking, in my hands.
"Ducks, I tell ya'." she went on. "You can raise one like a pet. It'll imprint on you as a duckling and follow you around. It eats kitchen scraps, and bugs and slugs in the garden."
"But the covenants say no poultry."
"Ducks aren't poultry! Hey Tommy?," she shouted several stalls down to Tommy Searcy, who raises pastured animals for meat. "Are ducks poultry?" Not really waiting for an answer, she continued, "No, ducks aren't poultry. Ducks are waterfowl. Waterfowl!"
"Waterfowl?"
"Waterfowl!"
"But I don't have any water," I stated. Ain't that the truth, especially now during the drought.
"A baby pool. They like to play in a baby pool," Corinna answered.
Okay, do you think the governor will approve that? Water use allowed only for fire departments and pet ducks.
"How about noise?" I asked.
"Not as noisy as chickens," she answered. And, I wondered, what's wrong with an occasional quack?
"Where do I keep one? I'm not allowed to build a coop," I asked.
"A dog house! It'll be happy in a dog house!"
A duck in a dog house. The Duck in a Dog House. Doesn't that sound like the name of a children's book? About a duck that literally lives in a dog house, but is always getting in trouble with the restrictive neighborhood so is figuratively "in the dog house" all the time, too?
The writer in me smiled. I would write this children's book. But I would need to have the duck first. I would need to know the duck. It would be a business initiative. Yes, my husband, not a chicken-keeping fan, would like this, wouldn't he? He is the biggest supporter of all my hair-brained (or rather, feather-brained) business schemes.
"I order my ducklings in the spring," Corinna added. "I could order one or two for you then." She mentioned a breed that averages 280 eggs a year.
As my older daughter and I got back in the car, we were both convinced that we were about to become duck owners. There was just no doubt in our minds. It all made such perfect sense.
"Let me check the covenants first before we bring this up with Daddy," I suggested gingerly.
And, then, when I downloaded the document and read the fine print, my future as a duck owner was obliterated:
The maintenance, keeping, boarding or raising of animals, livestock, or poultry of any kind, regardless of number, shall be and is hereby prohibited in any Unit or upon any of the Common Areas, except that this shall not prohibit the keeping of dogs, cats or caged birds as domestic pets provided they are not kept, bred or maintained for commercial purposes and, provided further, that they are not a source of annoyance or nuisance to the other Owners.
It goes on and on. There's the clause about no shacks, kennels, barns, sheds, or stables. Listen, there's even a line mixed right in there with the kennels and barns that prohibits "outdoor clothes dryers," which took me a minute to realize was actually clothelines. Hey, if I can't even run a clothesline in my yard, owning a duck suddenly seems like I'm asking for the world.
"It's not fair," my daughter exclaimed.
"Yes, it is," I said. "We knew all this when we bought a home in this neighborhood. We just didn't know, all those years ago, that we would one day want a duck in a dog house."
As for my husband, the first time he hears about this will be when he reads this post. And I will put money on it that I will literally hear his sigh of relief. However, he sure does like those muffins I make with those duck eggs!
There's only one thing I can say. Please keep 'em comin', Cutie and Corinna!
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6 comments:
Reading of your adventures coping with a restrictive neighborhood is ensuring that I keep all of these things in mind as I look at areas where I might want to buy a home.
Good luck to you,
Lissa
Lissa: You're smart to keep your objectives in mind, but also realize that neighborhoods like mine can be great places to have families, I know all my neighbors, the kids play freely in the streets and each other's yards, and there's lots of other good things about living here. Our decision to move here was very intentional. But I'd still like chickens!
Our deed restrictions read about the same as yours. I'm still thinking about keeping 2 bantam chickens in the spring. I don't think anyone would notice, none of my neighbors are ever around. Unlike your neighborhood we have all the bad things about living in a neighborhood without any of the good things. I think it is being in the north versus south. When we lived in Texas we knew all our neighbors and had neighborhood get togethers. We've been here 7 years and know the names of only 3 neighbors.
Oh, and even though this neigborhood is full of kids, they don't play in the streets. They are all in after school programs until their parents can pick them up after work. Then they go home, eat dinner, do homework, and go to bed. Even the boy next door who is the same age as Logan only gets to play once or twice a month.
Hey Pattie,
If you know and like your neighbors and the kids all play together, why not try to get a quorum of parents together to make a one time exception to the Covenants so that you and several others can undertake the raising of two ducks as an educational project for the benefit of all the nieghborhood kids?
We have a little lake (man-made) in our subdivision and there are ducks on this pond - all the kids love to play with them and feed them. They wander around the various yards and one family even posted a DUCK XZING sign on the main road so no one hits one by accident.
I think you could do it!
Judy: Ya' know what? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ask. I'll try.
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