Venus Pax wrote:A friend of mine keeps CHICKENS in her backyard. I can't figure out for the life of me how she has kept them for so long. And she has neighbors on all sides of her. She even had to chase one down the street one day. So far, no one has said anything.
Maybe she keeps enough chickens to keep her neighbors in eggs, and maybe the occasional broiler.
I live in a small suburb of a medium-sized city. If there are any zoning restrictions here, no one seems to pay attention. My wife has 10-15 clients per week dropping by her home-based business. (The city manager and police chief both live in cul-de-sacs behind us, and pass by our house several times a day going to/from city hall.) I didn't ask anyone's permission to close in my garage for my wife's business (since building permits aren't needed to replace or install doors or windows, I simply replaced a 16' door with a 36" door and a window, with a big shim to fill in the gaps.)
As for critters, we have five dogs and two cats, plus we're currently babysitting two small dogs and fostering a Great Pyrenees until we can find her owner, or new owners. We've had a ferret, a parrot, and a goat, plus fish tanks and turtles. It was just a couple of years ago that they passed an ordinance prohibiting cows and horses on lots under 2 acres (ours is a half acre, darn it), but grandfathered in those who were already there. There are horses catty-corner from city hall, and a ranch with longhorns that sometimes graze right up to the fence on the main road through town.
And of course we've had possums in the cat food, and snapping turtles looking for relief from the rain this very wet summer. We don't claim those, although my wife was calling him "our possum" for a while.
I should mention that this is a
nice neighborhood. Within 30 miles of Dallas or Houston, these ranch houses on half acre lots would go for $250-300 K, but luckily here they go for half that. People take care of their stuff without snoops measuring the height of their grass or running a spectrometer on the color of their shutters.
It's nice.
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into the HOA thread.