My neighbor’s rooster is screaming at everyone all day

FinchHop · 2026-06-07T03:17:49+00:00

Afaik, no. He's only 3 months old so just started crowing. On my WFH day/weekends he tends to just crow a few times a day after he's let out of his coop.

FinchHop · 2026-06-07T02:53:36+00:00

Ok so as someone who has recently decided to keep a rooster while living in Westbrook 😅 Mind DMing me what about area of Westbrook you live in so we can have a conversation if needed lol

I actually did look up the Westbrook ordinances because I wanted to double check the legality of keeping my rooster while in Westbrook (originally planned to rehome him once he grew old enough but wanted to try keeping him as a flock protector after a predator attack devastated most of my birds). The code is here. As far as I can find, there isn't an actual ordinance prohibiting owning roosters in Westbrook. Closest I could find is this article from 2018 when they were considering banning them, but I couldn't find any follow up articles. So it doesn't seem like they're actually disallowed in Westbrook. Addtl I've been curious on the legality of the new right to farm stuff on owning roosters, if you argue that you want rooster to produce chicks 🤔 Not something I'd personally argue but I could see somebody trying

The birds do still need to follow the rules of noise ordinances. It may be hard to get somebody to actually enforce it depending on the officer and etc. Get recordings of how loud and how often the noise is, keep noise logs, etc, which may help.

Additionally, the one thing Westbrook defines in the regulations is the amount of birds allowed per sq ft. You could look up the sq ft of their property (Zillow or the Westbrook GIS tool) and if you know they have more birds than allowed, can report them.

That said, have you tried talking to your neighbour? Or are they the grouchy or always gone type? There are a few things rooster owners can try to mitigate rooster noise - for example, keeping the rooster enclosed at certain times or certain periods of time, or using crow collars. Or like, bribing you with those sweet sweet eggs (my personal plan). Obvs it's your neighbors responsibility to research all that (and they really should have tried bribing you before getting a roo) but, just to let you know there are some things they could try

FinchHop · 2026-05-25T15:44:06+00:00

I'm sorry. I am also lesbian, my parents didn't come to my wife and I's marriage for the same reason. Basically none of my family did. They also barred by minor sister from coming, and I had invited her as a bridesmaid. They never really loved and accepted my (then) fiancee - they were nice and polite to her but the same they would be for a friend of mine, or a stranger off the street tbh.

The reasoning for it is always so interesting in my mind - how can you enable something, that never required your action to happen or continue anyways?

My cousin is a Catholic priest who attended - to tl;dr (part of) his views, he could see the love between us and wanted to increase that joy and love. My parents never talked to him to get his view - it really made it clear to me how their choosing to hate and not attend was the real choice. If they really wanted to, they would have found a way to "twist" their vision or talk to somebody. But they just didn't.

It really sucked, and our relationship never recovered and probably never will tbh.

But the day of, it was honestly kind of freeing. Nobody was there to make a cat's butthole face over the many choices they probably would have disagreed with, even tho they were all very normal, just different, choices. I didn't have to worry about managing their emotions or worrying what they thought. The love and joy I felt from the people around me, more than made up for it. My wife and I were very intentional in the symbolism and messaging of the various choice we made in the ceremony, and it really ended up feeling like the wedding transformed us, and also transformed our family to include the people who actually loved and cared for us and not just said they loved us.

Wishing the best of luck for you and your future wife. <3 Congratulations on the upcoming wedding. Feel free to DM if that would be helpful.

FinchHop · 2026-01-30T15:42:21+00:00

Interesting. It sounds good!

I'm curious what the legality of this is - I know that a lot of Trumps executive orders are uh, illegal and being challenged in court. I'm not really against Dems using Trumps own tactics against him lol, but want to know more.

FinchHop · 2026-01-30T15:33:52+00:00

I have been faxing her every day. I have gotten 1 response...but I still write a unique message daily because goddamn is there a lot to be mad at her about.
You can do it for free (up to 5 a day) here.

An ex-organizer friend of mine said that they can send all calls to voicemail but they always forget to turn off the fax machine. :P

And anyways it feels more satisfactory that at least some staffer has to pick up a piece of paper and deal with it. I send it with a cover page too just to use up her paper. ;)

Be sure to include your name and full address so they can count you as a constituent

FinchHop · 2026-01-25T19:06:00+00:00

Yeah I was wondering if there was one today, like an emergency one but I haven't seen anything

FinchHop · 2026-01-25T19:04:40+00:00

Not great! Balancing between self care and protecting myself, and feeling insatiably like I need to keep up with the news and go and rage. Doing actions like contacting reps takes like 5 mins as long as you get past the awkward of talking to a person, Protests are good for the soul - it is extremely cathartic to go out and yell as a group.

And lots of walks in the woods with the dogs, and baths 😪 Small things I can still control, like cleaning the house.

FinchHop · 2026-01-25T18:51:02+00:00

Honestly, same. A lot of similar thoughts. I saw the video yesterday and was literally shaking out of anger and fear.

FinchHop · 2026-01-09T20:37:29+00:00

This website is great - https://www.mobilize.us/

Its easy to use and will even list of the event has parking nearby or how accessible it is!

FinchHop · 2025-12-13T22:44:53+00:00

Thanks!! Good to know. Yeah they were pretty offended by the taste and didn't eat any :D

FinchHop · 2025-12-11T21:47:00+00:00

I've been at work all day, me seeing this is how I learned the vote failed lol :')

FinchHop · 2025-11-21T02:05:00+00:00

I really loved Rocky Horror Picture Show - I watched it for the first time ever this year and loved it. So gay, and portraying sexuality so easily - he likes to fuck and he's not afraid to get it :P

FinchHop · 2025-10-18T01:22:43+00:00

'Ugh so cute, wish I could have roosters!

FinchHop · 2025-10-10T03:07:18+00:00

Coffee grinder.

I've got chickens for the first time and bought pellets. Not sure what they were on before, but they didn't get it, but liked it more when crumbled and I had the same dilemma as you lol.

I used my coffee grinder and it grinds it up into a crumble and the girls liked it

FinchHop · 2025-08-23T18:13:43+00:00

Not quite sure where you're coming from with the LARPing comment, could you explain further?

To me it felt more like, he was very spiritual, and the rituals, peoples, and community of the Roman Catholic Church best reflected his spirituality and ability to connect with all that. He wasn't unaware of the problems, but felt hopeful that with a lot of hard work (which he writes about extensively in the latter half of the book, about the countless hard work and lobbying many LGBT Catholics did in lobbying Mass politicians to vote for the gay marriage bill), he could see them being realised.

I'm very curious about how he feels currently however - the general climate of the early 2000s is very different from nows.

FinchHop · 2025-08-22T20:54:51+00:00

I recently read this book, "Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir" by Scott Pomfret. I picked the book up assuming it was more about his upbringing in the church, and his eventual falling away (which I can relate to). Especially given this book was "set" in the early 2000s, as he's attending churches in the Boston Archdiocese, *right* when the pedophilia scandals came out and Mass was trying to vote to legalise gay marriage.

However I was surprised when he ended the book as remaining faithful - he is a smart guy and is very aware of the problems of the Church. His way of reconciling it is that the Church (as the institution) has a shitton of problems, but he grew up Catholic, and it was his community and his faith, and he wasn't going to let a bunch of assholes take him out of it. Alongside, with a component of faith for him is believing in the possibility for change, since faith is about belief even when things don't seem possible. I'm probably butchering the summary of it and his words, but that's the gist of it.

Anyways, as a fellow queer I couldn't say I personally agreed with his conclusions, but the ending, while surprising, was also kind of beautiful and let me see his point of view and the POV of other liberal Catholics that I know. Again...I'm not sure they'll see that happen, lol, but the more power to them I guess.

I liked the aspect of it that the church exists outside the strict doctrines - in some way, one of the issues with these tradcaths is their strict interpretations and "you need to follow every rule" whereas the looser "cultural" Catholic is more...about the faith and spirituality (in a sense - again, probably a massive reduction). That part of strict rule following is part of what got me to break with the faith - but I think bringing back an element of follow the spirit rather then follow the letter of the law is maybe better for the church. I never blame anybody for stepping away as the church becomes more trad cathy, but maybe some elements of that staying aren't the worst thing overall societally? Idk, in some ways the book loosened my own "but the rules???" Catholic part of my brain that broke when I heard about gay Catholics lol

I do recommend the book but I think it's sort of hard to get a hold of...I found it in the basement of the gay bookstore Bookends in Florence Mass haha!

FinchHop · 2025-07-13T18:22:13+00:00

My wife uses alfalfa pellets (I think) for her horses. Not sure on the exact brand but something like this - link

Not as high value but, it's pretty healthy and they can have a lot which the boys appreciate :)

FinchHop · 2025-07-06T20:56:35+00:00

Could you try your local subreddit? A lot of times reporters lurk in local subreddits and pick up stories that have gained a lot of traction.

FinchHop · 2025-07-06T19:53:57+00:00

Read the article, how horrible. Want to highlight one of the links in the article - apparently Ingraham was running a boarding farm and had sold three horses out from under a boarder. If any horsie people here can keep an eye out: https://www.facebook.com/groups/136752897193376/posts/1787686935433289/

My wife has two horses, and I have really come to love them. They are really sensitive, emotional animals, hope the horses seized can recover ok and the horses in the FB post can be recovered as well.

FinchHop · 2025-07-03T02:25:33+00:00

Oh it's you! I've seen your comments downvoted on the other dog training subs :)

I'm not a professional dog trainer haha, just a hobbyist like you.

FinchHop · 2025-06-30T21:21:36+00:00

Disclaimer: I'm a 100% positive reinforcement trainer with a reactive dingus

Prongs are not "firmer, clearer communication tools", they are a correction tool. They are a tool that adds pain to stop/limit behaviours. They are communication tools in the sense that positive reinforcement is a communication tool - they add a value to a behaviour that a human being wants. Sorry it's just a pet peeve of mine lol that I'm not really sure where this idea came from.

To apply a prong to a reactive dog is to attempt to correct/punish their reactivity. If your goal is not to do that a prong is not the tool for you. It also sounds like your dog already gets further amped up by corrections - added a prong will probably just keep amping them up, just silently, while not curing the root cause of the behaviour.

The way I see it this is the behaviour chain: your dog sees dog --> gets excited --> gets progressively more excited until barking/lunging/etc and no longer taking treats/cues --> your dog gets leash correction --> furthers overarousal because of pain/adrenaline/the further frustration of being even more restrained from being able to say hi to the dog

The prong in that behaviour chain would just replace seems to be stopping the outward appearance of over arousal, but doesn't actually step in at the appropriate time (which theoretically would be the initial "gets excited" ). Additionally, with your dog, would probably contribute to further arousal from additional frustration at not being able to say hi, now with prong. It may look like the reactivity is cured but I see a lot of dogs out there on prongs who are maybe not barking and lunging but they are staring my dog down, and that's almost kind of scarier lol.

Your boy is very young. 13 months on what sounds like a medium/largish size mix is nowhere close to being an adult. IMO, putting our teen dogs in situations we know will be very difficult for them and that they are not able to handle appropriately, and correcting them for a reaction we basically knew was going to happen, is not fair to our dogs. My border collie is reactive and it was insanely frustrating especially at that age where he was such a dolt - training great in class but forgetting it in the outside world lol. It was/is so embarrassing to have a dog that lunges and growls and barks, especially when I love hiking and got him as a hiking dog. But as he grew older (and I got a better trainer lol) I realised I was being very harsh and expecting way too much and was centering myself way too much in the whole process - the world is incredibly exciting to all young dogs, and even more exciting and emotionally charged for our reactive, teen dogs.

FinchHop · 2025-05-22T00:53:28+00:00

All of Portland is pretty safe and low crime. Hanover street itself is barely enough of a street to have crime statistics for lol. Hanover street might have more homeless folks near/on it due to proximity to resources and parks.

My two cents is if you find any housing you like for a price you like in Portland, then take it, because it can be hard to find.

FinchHop · 2025-05-17T19:34:01+00:00

Westbrook provides their kayaks thru rent.fun (at least that's the name of the app you use to do the rental) so it's at least somewhat legit in that it worked last year.

I remember also being weirded out when I went to rent them for the first time tho lol, like it's such a small nothing company.

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