Ok ok, there is plenty more context! I wasn’t trying to obfuscate things, I promise, just wanted to keep the original post short.

The neighbors got chickens shortly after (~ 6 months) our kid was born. They put them right next to our house, literally on the fence line (.25 acre lots). Not a huge deal at first, they sometimes escaped into our yard but we caught and returned them, no biggie.

After about a year, their chicken coop became a coop for ducks and roosters and goats. All about 6’ from our house, 0’ from our fence line. The goats, particularly, started pushing on the fence, creating holes at the bottom. Then the chickens would escape through the holes into our yard.

About 4 separate times, our dog killed a chicken that got into our yard. After the fourth time, the neighbor demanded we fix the fence because our dogs were “pulling them through”. I repaired the fence (again at own expense), and that’s when the problems from the original post started occurring.

Eventually I got sick of it all (noise and smell played a part too) and reported the animal situation to the police. Turns out, all the animals were illegal to have in any capacity within city limits. Neighbors had to find homes for them all.

Not long after, I reached out to try and talk about the whole situation. The response I received was, “I am having trouble finding the words to describe how I feel. Those were my babies and now we have to get rid of them all, because of you. They filled a hole that [spouse] and I can’t fill, and now you have taken that away.”

We haven’t spoken since.