. . . home, home on the range, where the penguins and the antelope play . . .

Like a lot of people, the Ava Bright family lives in a neighborhood with an HOA.  Generally, HOA stands for “Home Owners Association” but at our house it means “Hunting Obnoxious Anarchist”.  We receive several violation letters a year from the management company because, apparently we didn’t bother to read the 902 pages of covenants, conditions, and restrictions we were given before we moved in.  There’s a whole lot of stuff you can’t do at your own house.  And, more importantly, there’s an old man who drives around looking for this stuff so he can report you. (You can read the actual letter here – vistoso – maybe – we’re technical morons  – give it a shot.) We get lots of letters about weeds.  In our defense, everything looks like a weed in the desert.  We’ve also gotten a letter for violating the height of

Sneaky penguin

the low hanging branches on our tree.  Those branches are not allowed to grow as nature intended – they must be not less than 9ft from the top of the correct color gravel.  Our gravel is the correct color, just so you know. Our latest problem involves a penguin.  We’ve never received a photograph before with any of the letters.  Here it is.  Luckily, the letter specifically addresses the penguin that is in violation – “Penguin in Santa hat under your front window” – just so we don’t mix it up with the other penguins in our front yard.  Isn’t he the cutest penguin wearing a Santa hat you’ve ever seen? Instead of removing him, we’re going to put an American flag bandanna over the Santa hat.  Anarchist unit!