We live in a Chicago suburb, with lots approximately 60’x150’. Not terribly congested, but not rural either. Plenty of wildlife including skunks, raccoons, fox, possums, squirrels, chipmunks, mice…
The neighbors diagonally to our SW have long treated their yard as a wildlife habitat/shelter. In addition to LOTS of corn and seed, they strew food scraps in their back yard. They keep a bowl of kibble on their front stoop, as well as a dog house (they do not have a dog) and a heating pad in winter.
Our neighbors immediately to our N recently began strewing food scraps in the rear corner of their backyard closest to our yard. Fruit and vegetable scraps, bread, etc.
We have a dog. There are plenty of skunks in our neighborhood and our dogs have been skunked several times. We prefer not to attract more than occur naturally. Also, we regularly find apple cores, bread crusts, and other food in our backyard - our assumption is that squirrels drop them there. Our dog has occasionally vomited food stuff that we know we have not fed him.
Yesterday I was in the yard when I saw the neighbor to the N come out with a plastic bag. I asked if she was distributing food scraps. She said, yes, she was just doing what the other neighbors do. She was doing so to attract fox. We have previously found these neighbors unreceptive to our requests regarding downspouts directed towards ur property and contractors going over our property to access their back yard. Both times we had to involve code enforcement - which agreed that our concerns were entirely warranted and their actions not permitted. Years ago when we asked the other neighbor to the SW to stop attracting skunks, they laughed and said we should teach our dog to avoid skunks.
I reviewed the city code, and the nuisance and compost provisions seem to pretty clearly prohibit distributing food scraps to attract wildlife.
Call (or email or PM on facebook) your alderperson. IME, they’re generally the person that can create the most noise at city hall when it comes to relatively minor code issues that tend to boil down to neighbor conflicts.
In my city, someone was doing something similar, just on larger scale. It took them probably a year or two to get it dealt with. It got to the point where they ended up calling newspaper/TV news stations for help. It got to the point where they couldn’t spend any amount of time outside their own house because the smell was so bad and there were so many flies.
But, yeah, get some pictures, gather your facts and contact your alderman, I think that’s your best bet. Hopefully they can pass it on to the appropriate person at city hall which should trigger inspections.
A couple of things we’ve observed through our 35 years in suburbia. The suburbs we have lived in have been very reticent to affirmatively enforce clear provisions in their codes. Well, actually - they are extremely eager to enforce some things, but on other things, seem to urge residents to work things out themselves. This works well in many situations - I feel you SHOULD be able to talk and resolve things with your neighbors. But it is a bit problematic when you have experiences suggesting you and your neighbors will not see eye to eye. And I think the village SHOULD be willing to address at least some obvious matters, without relying on the residents to complain and request enforcement. Also - as I observed - there are things that clearly violate code, which the municipalities simply decline to enforce. My pet peeve is parking over the sidewalks.
In this city, in the past, code enforcement has been very responsive, tho they do ask that you at least attempt to resolve it first. I anticipate difficulty discussing it with these people - based on past interactions. And yesterday I did say we preferred not attracting vermin and skunks. She said she does not consider fox to be vermin, and that skunks do not come around due to the fox. (There are A LOT of fox in our neighborhood.)
We put a call into code enforcement yesterday, but have not heard back. This morning we typed up a letter, saying the food scraps got into our yard and made our dog sick, and citing the relevant code provisions, and placed it in the 2 neighbors’ mailboxes. Since the neighbor to the N repeatedly said she was doing what the other neighbor was doing, we addressed the letter to both households.
We are awaiting them responding that we are being unreasonable!
I had a neighbor that put out food scraps for crows. Complaining to her about the crows and crow crap all over my yard did nothing. The crows were smart enough to start gathering an hour or so before she put out her scraps. I started scaring them away, first with a pot and wooden spoon, then a BB gun. She called me every name in the book. One day she found a dead crow in her yard and blamed me. She called the sheriff, they referred her to Animal Control. After talking to both of us, the AC officer ripped her a new one. Crows are on a list of nuisance animals and are illegal to feed.
Yup. The house next door has had a rat infestation for going on eight years now. They have spent thousands on pest control companies to try to exterminate them. Also (it’s probably been mentioned), many animals carry rabies.
Skunks are pretty fearless. Probably due to that lovely defense mechanism they have. They seem to pretty much take a straight path to where they’re going without regards to what yards might contain what.
Yeah - I’m aware of that. We’ll deal with it if the federal government chooses to prosecute us. Which I imaging is exceedingly unlikely.
Heck, I actually asked my wife if we should mail them, but she preferred not to - because our darned PSPS delivery is so unreliable!
Probably should have taped them to the doors or something, but we were just trying to do the best we could to ensure they got them, without dedicating even more effort and attention to this stupid situation. Possibly relevant factors in our defense - the practice in this neighborhood has consistently been to use the mailboxes (generally slots opening to the inside) for xmas/sympathy cards, etc. among neighbors. Given their nature, they never fill up. But yeah - we’ll see how far those get us when we are hauled into federal court.
I’ve always found that law curious, but have never researched its interpretation and enforcement. It seems exceedingly curious that the federal government could restrict the manner in which I wanted to use a receptacle that I paid for and affixed to my home. But, not anything I care to debate today.
Oh, I wasn’t thinking you’d be prosecuted for a crime, just that if you made enemies of your neighbors, they’d have this to make a fuss about (if they’re aware of the law). Let’s hope and assume they’re not, and they won’t.
Your guess is as good as mine as to the reason for the law. But it’s just as well people can’t go spamming the whole neighborhood with any junk they want to put in people’s mailboxes, bypassing the postal system and its costs. I’d think some of these parking-lot-flyer people could overwhelm legit mail delivery if they were allowed to place stuff directly in your mailbox.
So you are concerned that wild animals will enter your yard and tangle with your dog? Do you think that refraining from feeding wild animals will eliminate this possibility?
Yeah - like I said, it is curious. And I am minimally curious about the extent to which it is ever prosecuted. Let’s say I want to give my neighbor a sympathy card after the death of a relative. The USPS’ position is that I HAVE to place a stamp on it, and expect the USPS to deliver it at some point in the foreseeable future?
I’m generally a pretty big supporter of the USPS and federal services. But mail delivery in our neighborhood is - at best - unpredictable. I would estimate it gets delivered 3-4 days a week max - with some regular mail delivered on Sundays! We also has a recent experience when we mailed something of nostalgic value (silverplated silverware in an express mail box) to our son. The empty box was delivered, and the USPS denied our claim for even the minimum $50. So yeah, we wanted this to get to them, and did not view the USPS as a reliable means.
So that gets to the usage of the mail box. I guess I should look into the origin of that law. It really strikes me as curious that the federal government can demand an exclusive use of something that is my personal property. Yeah, I get it - the USPS is not as likely to complain in this instance as my asshole neighbors. But it still strikes me as curious, and I wonder how and how often it is enforced.
Finally, we were in the situation of trying to figure out HOW MUCH MORE effort we had to expend in trying to resolve this REALLY STUPID matter that we really shouldn’t have to deal with in the first place. We tried calling the city, with no immediate response. I guess we SHOULD have sent it by mail. Probably return receipt - to verify delivery. The folk N of us are sufficiently unreasonable that both my wife and I try not to interact with them unless we are both there - in order to have a witness. And we decided mail was better than telephone or oral, as it left a record of exactly what we said. We could have attempted to hand deliver, but we were chicken.
So yeah, it is not inconceivable that this will become about our misuse of the mailbox system. If it does, I’ll have more to post here.
Not only that, but also their food trash making it into our yard where he eats it.
Yes, I realize there is a chance of wildlife in any event. We just don’t see a reason to attract MORE wildlife.
My concerns impress you as unreasonable?
carrps - Yeah, there are coyotes - and deer - all over the place, tho mostly in parks, forest preserves, and along streams and expressways. But generally not terribly active IN the neighborhoods. Over the past 2 years, the fox have been VERY prominent. Last year there was obviously a den in a house 1 block N of us. You would see an adult and 6-7 kits playing on the front yard. There are plenty of bunnies, squirrels, mice and such for them to eat. No reason to give them bread and veggies.
I heard somewhere that regarding foxes and coyotes, you tend to have one or the other. But I suspect that is not hard science. I know in my first 58 or so years in this area, I saw fewer than 5 red fox. Over the past couple of years, I have seen more than 5 at one time on various occasions, and rarely go more than a week without seeing 1 or 2. Sometimes 1 or 2 will just sit/lie on a front lawn as we walk past with our dog. Or we’ll see one up on the neighbor’s stoop, eating kibble out of a bowl. One time a fox followed my dog and me for about a block - stopping when we stopped, walking when we walked. The fox are doing just fine.
Our biggest complaint is w/ skunks - which we consider vermin. I think they ought to be trapped and removed - I CERTAINLY believe they ought not be encouraged.
And it would be different if they were doing this as part of a composting effort - mixing scraps in with yard detritus. But it is not. Instead, it is an intentional effort to attract wildlife. And with our yard directly between 2 such feeders, we get a god deal of traffic.
This thread is kind of the flip side of the unreasonable HOA regulations threads. It could make one almost long for a committee of unemployed busybodies who go around with a clipboard, issuing hefty fines for things like leaving scraps in the yard. So sorry about your neighbors.
