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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2026-08-14 04:02:02+00:00.

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I am not The OOP, OOP is u/oopschicken

I [29F] accidentally ran over my neighbor's [40sM/F] chicken and I don't know how to resolve the situation

Original Post  Apr 5, 2016

The details are pretty much in the title. I live in an affluent suburb within an urban area and many of the people in my community own chickens. I guess it's a thing in suburbs now, I'm not sure. But in any case, when my husband and I moved in, we noticed a lot of chicken coops in back yards.

My next-door neighbors own about 12 chickens that they allow to range down our street. It's not all the time, but occasionally I'll come home and see some chickens plucking in our front yard. It's not a big deal and I'm not bothered by it in the slightest.

This morning I was in a rush to head to work. I had gone into the office early, but forgotten some packets I had created for a work presentation. So I rushed home, gathered everything, and rushed out. Except in rushing out, I felt the dreaded "ba-dunk-dunk" that meant I had hit something. I looked over to my right and saw a few chickens in my front yard and my heart sank even lower.

I got out of my car and sure enough, I had hit and killed one of my neighbor's chickens. I called my husband, freaking out, unsure of what to do. He told me to wrap it up in some newspaper or something and leave it by the neighbor's chicken coop and he would call my neighbor.

Of course, we didn't have newspaper so I ended up wrapping up the poor thing in a trash bag. I also wrote an apology/sympathy note, expressing my sincere condolences for the accident and offering to help in any way I could. This was all very quick due to my standing appointment at work, so it was perhaps less polished than I would prefer, but I wanted to try and do it as right as possible.

Husband called neighbor during my presentation and our neighbor was not happy. And not happy to the point of going on a community message board and Facebook and talking about us. He said we stuffed his chicken in a trash bag and scribbled a note about it on an old fast food bag (which isn't true, I have blank stationary and used one of the blank cards for the note.)

He also began talking about pressing charges and reported us to the HOA. And now it's this huge thing and half of our neighborhood hates us and I'm not sure how we can resolve the situation, peacefully.

I think we should offer to buy a new chicken for our neighbor, but my husband disagrees. He thinks it's the neighbor's own negligence in letting his chickens roam, which led to this. Husband believes an accident was bound to happen and neighbor is to blame. Which, I don't necessarily disagree with, but this chicken was a pet to my neighbor and when a pet dies or is killed, people's emotions can get the best of them.

What's a good way to resolve this, Reddit?

tl;dr: Accidentally ran over my neighbor's chicken. Neighbor is angry and is defaming our character to the rest of the neighborhood. How can I resolve this?

RELEVANT COMMENTS

applesauceUG

Screw that dip, you shouldn't have apologized since that indicates you did something wrong. Now he feels he has something to be offended about.

The truth is he shouldn't be letting his chickens run all over the fucking place if he wants their safety guaranteed. I see you posted you often find them grazing in your yard. That is well outside the bounds of where his chickens should be allowed to roam.

If I were you I would contact HOA (don't mention the incident, just find some facts) about what the allowance of pets/livestock are and where they are allowed to roam unattended. Most likely they don't allow somebodies chickens to run around on other peoples properties with or without a caretaker.

I bet the HOA threat is bullshit on his side, so find out their true stance on pets/livestock roaming the neighborhood and onto other properties unattended. Next time he says anything about it you can let them know the HOA sides with you and not him.

You are NOT in the wrong here.

OOP

I will call my HOA president on my home from work today - good idea. I didn't even think of researching the animal laws within the city.

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1950sGuy

I'd say to keep the peace, pay for a new chicken which is like six dollars (i've had them for years, hell if you're in ohio, you can come get a chicken from me) but he's being totally unreasonable. Free range chickens die. they die a lot, and often. It's the cost of doing business when you let them roam free, which I guarantee is against some city ordnance anyway. Let him contact the HOA, i'm actually quite surprised they even let you have chickens to begin with.

Again, i'd offer to pay for the chicken he was basically neglectful about just to keep the peace, if he won't accept, fuck 'em and sit on your porch with a bucket of KFC and glare at him.

OOP

Oh husband was already asking if he could stop by Popeye's tonight and bring it to the HOA meeting.

I didn't realize chickens were so cheap! I think I'll do that as well as what another poster suggested, which is contact the HOA regarding livestock/pet roaming allowance. We are legally bound to keep our dogs on a leash so it's not unreasonable to assume that my neighbor would be bound to keep his chicken in the coop.

Update  Apr 7, 2016 (2 Days Later)

Hi Reddit, I meant to update yesterday but it was another long work day and I pretty much collapsed once I got home. My original post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4di6af/i_29f_accidentally_ran_over_my_neighbors_40smf/

First of all, thank you all for the advice (and the laughs.) I truly felt bad for running over the chicken, it just left me feeling icky for accidentally harming and killing an animal. But your perspective was welcome and helped lighten the mood.

My husband would like to treat you all to a round of beers because he’s convinced that everyone was on his side (even though I'm not sure there were sides.) He also thoroughly enjoyed your egg-cellent responses, which I’m afraid has only encouraged his continued chicken jokes. Husband is a special man.

But on to the update. I ended up working late on Tuesday, but while I was working my HOA president (Michael) called me. He apologized for not seeing the NextDoor posts earlier and he had put in a request (on our behalf) to have the post removed.

Apparently the thread grew so large that someone had started a second thread about the incident. But thankfully the request went through and the posts were pulled before it could get worse. We couldn’t do much about the Facebook posts, but oh well?

Michael asked if husband and I could come to the meeting earlier so he could talk with us. So pretty much when I got home, we went to meet with Michael. The gist of the conversation was that our neighbor has a knack for causing issues with others in the neighborhood. Most people in the community ignore it, but some people also like the drama of getting involved. Michael said it would blow over eventually and in the meantime, if we needed support, we could call on him and his husband to help out. Michael also assured us that he would address it in the general meeting.

At the HOA meeting, Michael opened it up by reminding us that we are a community and it’s important to respect each other and that if we have issues, we need to resolve them privately. He said harassment online or in person would not be tolerated and reminded us that it would be in the victim's right to contact law enforcement. He also passed around packets that outlined our city’s ordinances regarding animals and he said any violations with free range livestock would be fined starting that evening.

After the meeting, many people came up to us to show their support and overall we left feeling better and not ostracized. We did not end up offering to buy a new chicken because neighbor and his wife pretty much avoided us and they left before the meeting was over. So the bad news is that we won’t be able to borrow their lawnmower or be invited to their annual summer party. The good news is that I think we’ll still survive.

I also think some of my distress over the event has been around being stressed with work (I’ve been pulling 60-70 hr weeks lately) and of course, accidentally harming and killing an animal. I think those two factors combined made me blow it all out of proportion a bit.
  
tl;dr: HOA president is a champ and has helped support us through this mess. Most of our neighbors still like us. Next-door Neighbor is just a jerk who likes to cause problems. Husband is meal-planning chicken-focused meals for the next week. I’m going to put in a request some vacation time.

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One of those rare HOA saves the day!