After watching coyotes repeatedly invade their property and kill seven beloved goats, one Orange County family says it finally found a way to keep the predators out, only to end up in a legal fight with its homeowners association.
Steve and Karen Blume, who live on a one-acre property in Nellie Gail Ranch in Laguna Hills, are being sued by their HOA after Steve raised the backyard fence beyond the community’s six-foot height limit without first getting approval.
“The coyotes were just jumping over the fence and killing my goats,” Steve Blume told CBS.
“It’s a horrible thing to go out there and see your goats ripped apart.”
Desperate to stop the attacks, Blume first added mesh, increasing the fence from six feet to eight feet.
When the coyotes still got in, he installed blinking lights.
That didn’t work either.
His final modification finally ended the problem.
“I put a 45-degree angle at the top of the fence, which made it about nine feet high, and that completely kept the coyotes out of the yard,” he said.
The successful fix, however, also landed the family in court.
Blume acknowledged he never sought HOA approval before making the changes, but said he was dealing with an emergency after losing seven pets.
He also argued that other laws require him to protect his animals.
The family said they are also baffled that a nearby tennis court fence on their property is permitted to stand as high as 15 feet to keep tennis balls from rolling down a hill, while their coyote barrier has become the subject of a lawsuit.
“That is comparing the life of a goat to a tennis ball,” Karen Blume told CBS. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
In a statement, the HOA said it tried to reach a compromise before filing suit, claiming the Blumes “refused to make any changes to the non-compliant fence and have declined to participate in mediation.”
The Blumes said the options proposed by the HOA would cost thousands of dollars.
The association is now asking a judge to order the family to comply with the neighborhood’s six-foot fence restriction.
The dispute has also ignited debate online, with many Reddit users questioning whether HOA rules should take priority when homeowners are trying to protect their pets from repeated attacks.
“The HOA needs to take a step back and work with the owners to find a solution that works for them,” one commenter wrote. “The chain link fence is and was a temporary solution to find out what it takes to keep out coyotes.”
Others argued the family knew what they were signing up for when they moved into an HOA community.
“I don’t know. I can’t really have any sympathy for people on 1 acre estates in Laguna squabbling with the HOA they agreed to live under about protecting their pets from the nature they decided to live near. I feel like everyone involved in this situation is a rich out of touch a**h***.”
One commenter suggested an old alternative instead: “If only they had a solution that’s been around for centuries like dogs that are born to protect livestock.”
Another stripped away the noise, boiling the entire controversy down to a single, missing ingredient: common sense.
“There’s an easy solution, don’t move into an HOA neighborhood.”
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