Portage Bay, get ready to be a lot less crow-y.
The Mann family gained worldwide notoriety when the BBC wrote a story about their daughter, who would receive gifts from the crows who she and her family would feed on a regular basis around their Seattle home on the 1000 block of East Shelby Street.
The feel-good story didn’t feel so good to the Mann’s neighbors on both sides, Matt Ashbach and Christine Yokan. Those two filed a lawsuit following a 2015 court order to stop the Manns from providing “large quantities of food to wildlife on a regular basis” to the many crows who knew to come there. By doing so, they “caused unusually high numbers of wild animals, particularly crows, pigeons and rats to congregate.”
Now that lawsuit has been settled, according to the Seattle Times.
Per the settlement, the Manns had to pay the plaintiffs a sum of money and restrict their crow feeding for eight years. The lawsuit had sought $200,000 in damages to cover costs related to cleaning, painting and replacing damaged property.
The previous court order has restricted them to providing no more than four ounces of food to animals per day while also barring them from leaving food on sidewalks or scaring away natural predators of birds.
Sorry, crows.