Yeah, remember those black duck-like creatures that make their winter home in the Bridgeport lake? Well, they haven’t left Santa Clarita yet, but they’re still causing an uproar, and the LA Times had a great article today on the coots and the uhhh…ummm…. mess in Bridgeport.
What’s great about this article is that it confirms what we saw from Bridgeport HOA officials earlier this year when The Signal reported on this story: No one in Bridgeport wants to talk about it. You get the sense Bridgeporters just want to kill their coots in peace with no outside attention from the damned environmentalists.
Check out the Times’ description of Bridgeport:
The subdivision was named Bridgeport not because there was a bridge or a port, but because the builders fancied the look of Bridgeport, Conn.
Behind white picket fences and fake boulders that hide utility boxes are million-dollar Cape Cod houses — the real deal, sort of, with gabled roofs and little round windows that make you feel like you’re staring out of a fishing boat.
To many who live here, it is divine suburbia, with safe streets, great schools and big parks — a masterfully planned community right down to the tidy piles of mulch around the base of every baby tree.
A cynic might argue that the birds were never going to fit in.
That’s probably true. One of the commenters on the story said this:
Ninety-two percent of California’s wetlands are gone due to development. So you built a fake lake and the desperate birds land in that lake because they have no where else to land, and you want to kill the coots.
There’s also more information about how many coots are calling Bridgeport home these days. The answer comes from the management company in charge of Bridgeport. Russel Hoffman says 500 coots are swimming, flying, eating, and pooping all around Bridgeport, a number he claims could produce up to 20,000 pounds of poop during a six month stay.
Yes. 20,000 pounds of coot poop in our very own Bridgeport.
In any event, the Bridgeport HOA still has the culling permit and would be within their rights to start drugging & euthanizing the birds. But as it warms up, the Times says, the coots may leave on their own soon.