My own HOA diatribe:
2 years ago moved into a FL HOA community on an acre of land that backs up to an HOA “lake”. Really just a big pond.
Large male gator (~10 ft) since day one was curious but never came onto the property. 2 years later a “smaller” (9’) female moves in and regularly comes out onto my lawn and my kitty-corner neighbor’s. I have a dog and adult kids/grandkids who visit us on a regular basis.
I call FL fish and game and they send out a contractor to bait and remove the gators. The way it works in FL is the state bids out the job to gator hunters, who pay the state a stipend then then profit from the gator carcass anyway they can.
Gatgor guy shows up in his marked pickup and starts telling me how he’s gonna get the gators. This guys is about 60, knows his stuff, and has killed more gators than I’ve ever seen.
Not 3 minutes later, one of the HOA director’s wives pedals her little beach cruiser down to my lot and asks what’s going on. 5 minutes later her husband rolls up in his pickup.
Within 10 minutes all 4 of the HOA directors are on the street in front of my house asking on whose authority I’m having the gators removed, it’s not my lake, I don’t own the shoreline, etc...
To his credit, the gator hunter has seen this a thousand times, and quickly schools the HOA types on liability, FL law, and my rights.
The HOA busy bodies give me a few more stern warnings, tell me maybe I should move out of the neighborhood, and lecture me on the HOA covenants (which, strangely, aren’t applied to their friends in the neighborhood) before I tell them I have to get back to work, take it easy.
2 hours later I get an email from a member of the HOA board telling me they’ve “approved the removal of the gators” from the lake and I should keep them advised of what happens.
My guess is they had a quick call with an attorney and realized they were playing with a liability nightmare.
Bunch of know-nothing busybodies with an inflated sense of worth.
As my favorite author Patrick McManus once wrote: “There’s nothing worse than an ignorant individual smugly exercising authority far in excess of their intelligence.”
“kitty-corner”
I always used catty-corner but see it is now a close second.
Catty is closer to the middle English catre.
Knowingly harboring dangerous animals on HOA common grounds. Could cost the board and the neighborhood millions in a negligence suit. Oh, and how about the potential for conspiracy to murder of a child under the.depraved indifference theory.
He was one of my favorites as well. Why my stepfather was dying, I read That’s books to him. It seemed to help with the pain he was experiencing prior to his death