Jury Says Duck Case Won’t Fly

The Villa Park duck lady has a simple lesson to spread: Don’t feed the birds.

That seemingly animal-friendly gesture landed Judy and Ron Simons in criminal court after a two-year battle with neighbors and city officials. Four days of trial, two hours of jury deliberations and more than $25,000 in legal fees later, the Orange County couple were cleared Tuesday of misdemeanor charges that they created a public nuisance by feeding ducks in their backyard.

While they were at it, they learned the power of a bread crumb.

What started out as one visiting family of ducks quickly became a flock, shifting the entire migratory pattern of hungry mallards to the Simonses’ backyard--angering neighbors who complained to the Villa Park City Council about the noise and the mess.

“It was a neighborhood dispute that exploded,” said the Simonses’ Santa Ana attorney, Vincent La Barbera.

Wild mallards, as many as 600 to 900 of them at the peak, would descend in the backyard, leaving duck droppings plastered on cars and lawn furniture. According to expert testimony during the trial, each duck produces 2.4 to 4.8 ounces of waste each day.

At one time, Judy Simons was leaving out 235 pounds of feed or “scratch” a day. (Though Simons first attracted the birds with bread, she quickly learned it is unhealthful for ducks.)

Her neighbors complained and the city drafted a tailored ordinance that bans the feeding of wild ducks if it creates a nuisance or health hazard.

Judy and Ron Simons say they stopped once the city asked, but the birds kept coming. And the neighbors kept complaining, prompting the city attorney to file criminal charges against the couple.

City officials said they repeatedly tried to settle along the way, but firmly believed the Simonses continued to violate the city ordinance.

“There are a thousand other swimming pools in this city and they don’t have hundreds of ducks,” City Manager Fred Maley said. “They go there for a reason: to get fed.”

Although some jurors believed that the Simonses continued the feedings, they said there was not enough evidence to convict them.

“I agree with the neighbors; they just didn’t prove it happened on those dates,” said juror Craig Bailey, 27, of Costa Mesa. “It was ridiculous, the situation that brought us here. It could have been taken care of a long time ago. She could have stopped feeding the ducks as a good neighbor. . . . Even though the city lost, they won because she won’t be feeding the ducks anymore.”

The Simonses say it was ludicrous for the city to take it so far, spending taxpayer dollars to resolve a neighborhood dispute. They called experts to testify that the ducks had become “pre-programmed” to return during their migratory season.

Someday, once their legal fees are paid off, the Simonses might be able to look back and chuckle. The ducks did, after all, win them a new Nissan Pathfinder from “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” They met Oprah Winfrey and fielded calls from “48 Hours” and CNN once the case went public.

With the saga coming to a close, Judy Simons admits a bit wistfully that it was time for the ducks to go. And for now, the plastic duck-shaped pool chlorinator, the decoy that might have attracted the birds in the first place, is hidden away too.

Even so, Judy Simons says that even a few years after she quit putting out feed, six to eight mallards stop every day.

“They use it as a hiatus,” said Ron Simons, who arrived in court Tuesday wearing a duck-motif tie. “They’ll just sit around in the pool and rest.”

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Times staff writer Stuart Pfeifer contributed to this story.