A bird's gotta eat.

Do you enjoy watching birds?

Maybe you have a bird feeder so you can see them up close and personal.

I had a bird feeder, I loved watching my feathered friends come and pay a visit.

I enjoyed watching the cats get wound up over the birds.

What I never thought about was that my habit of feeding the birds would cost me $500 in fines and late fees.

Eh hmmm.

Let me give you a bit of history here.

We live in a townhouse, we are temporary renters. We've lived here nearly 2 years and have never seen an association packet of rules and regulations. Nor have we received a copy of our signed lease. 

Apparently our landlord doesn't see the urgency or importance of us having these items.

That is until last week when he got a letter from the association lawyers threatening him with court if he didn't pay his outstanding fines and late fees to those fines.

The fines started racketing up because I had a soft spot in my heart for feeding woodland creatures.

you see bird feeders and pet tie-outs are against the rules...and we had both.

Nobody ever told us these things were "illegal". The tie-out I can understand, did you know there are people out there that hate dogs?

Yeh, I know!

Hubs told me our LL is willing to pay the late fees for us but we are on the hook for the fines.

Haha ((snort))

He funny. (yes, I meant to say "He funny")

My first thought was this is a joke.

My second thought was; you can't get milk from a dead cow.

And my third: Hubs, you can handle this one.

LL was under the assumption that we were getting notices about the fines. Did he also think we were ignoring them? 

Wouldn't you think after the second notice you'd get a hold of your renters and see what the deal was? Maybe send them the association rules they requested every month for the first YEAR?

Nope, he let late fees rack up to the grand total of $500.

Not only did our Landlord (LL) not tell us, it seems none of our friendly neighbors/association members could say: "Oh, hey, I know you are new and I see you have a bird feeder/tie-out and unfortunately those are against the rules. You could get fined for that."

Nope, not one neighbor. Not one.

What I really want to know is what do these people have against feeding the birds???

It's not like I'm feeding tigers or trying to lure crocodiles out of the swampy pit they call a "Lake".

HAHA Crocodiles in Minnesota...that would never happen.

Maybe if more people fed the birds we wouldn't get wasp nests under our decks every summer.

Why don't they do something about that?!?

I mean people can DIE from a bee sting...

Are they afraid feeding the birds will bring on the avian flu?

I have no idea.

It's dumb, I wish they'd be more concerned with the dog owners who don't pick up after their dogs!!!!

At least when ours was tied out, she could only poop within 10 feet of our door, which doesn't make it any easier to find by the way. Small dogs small poos.

No, the neighborhood pooper is NOT a small dog.

I just hope when the birds come back this Spring they don't seek revenge on me for closing down the only meal ticket in town.

I would hate to be thought of as a bird hater.