Of Vitamins and Roosters, Take II

Previously, elfs had mentioned in this post about our neighbors and their poultry and the vitamin saga.

Today, I did two things. Because I had read previously in other journals that there are zoning laws regarding poultry and livestock, I decided to find out about what Burien feels about it. The upshot is that they aren't really sure about poultry in the house...it might fall into the category of small animal, in which case you can apparently have as many as you want in your house (which I think would not only be ludicrous but dangerous), or it's an unknown factor. Also, roosters are right out, inside or outside a home. One of the boys did say that one of the animals was a rooster, but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In any case, the folks at the zoning section of city hall said that if I filled out a citizen action form that they would do the research, visit the home, and determine if there was any problems and inform the neighbors of what problems, if any, existed.

The second thing I did was talk with them about the vitamin incident. This produced some interesting results. I started by talking to the 16 year old boy, F, who is, in many ways, more mature and moral than his father. I told him what I had found and what Kouryou-chan had told me. He was aghast, and immediately brought A out to find out what was going on. She confirmed it, but here's where it got really interesting. She said that the 7 year old girl S and the 4 year old girl Mc had brought out the vitamins to her, and so she had passed them on to Kouryou-chan...she even tried to claim to me that it wasn't her fault because she was just passing what S and Mc had given her onto Kouryou-chan (knowing that they were vitamins, btw), and hadn't gone and gotten them herself! This is coming from a 13 year old girl who is apparently trying to pass her responsibility onto a 7 and 4 year old.

By this time I'm thinking that there's more wrong with this kid than I had previously thought. I've seen (and heard) her interactions with the kids, especially with the girls, and have been tempted to call CPS. We both told her very firmly that it was indeed her responsibility, that she was *never* to give either Kouryou-chan or Yamaarashi-chan anything, food, drink, or other, without either my or Elf's express consent, and lectured her on the dangers of double (and more) dosing of children with vitamins and how it was not her responsibility to be doing this. F called his stepmom and, after talking with her, he said she'd talk with me when she got home.

As soon as D was home she did indeed talk with me, and was very apologetic about the whole thing. She said that A had a lot of emotional and social problems from a long time with her mother and that they (D and her husband) had taken A in rather than let her go to foster care in hopes of helping her. But D is not home to really help A. A needs someone there more often, a strong parental personality that can also provide her with the correct structure she needs to move away from these problems. She has obvious rage problems (I can see that) and she needs therapy. The way that family is currently set up, A will get none of this. D said that if A doesn't shape up soon, that she will have to let A go because she can't have her around her children with these problems (I've seen A slap the girls around the head and face, *hard*, and watched her pick the 4 year old up by the head at her throat off of the ground). I do not see that road changing.