EAST END L.I. COCK FIGHT
Neighbor vs. loud rooster
This rooster really ruffled some feathers.
Neighbors in the Hamptons have been duking it out in a wild, months-long feud over a noisy rooster — with one side squawking that the bird constantly wakes him and the other reporting “harassment” to cops.
The fowl play — which is now unfolding in a local court case — began last May in East Hampton after Marc Auerbach, 53, got fed up with loud predawn crowing by neighbor Efrain Mayorga’s pet rooster, Brownie (inset).
Auerbach griped to the town that the feathered loudmouth starts its “awful animal scream” at around 4:45 a.m., then continues off and on until 8 a.m., according to court documents.
“Excuse my language, but it’s f--king ridiculous,” Auerbach, 53, told The Post. “I had to go to a doctor and take sleeping pills to deal with it.”
Auerbach said he lost a $1,750per-month rental tenant due to the noise and that his kids no longer want to stay with him because they lose sleep, according to court papers.
He repeatedly complained to the town about the cock-a-doodle disturbance, penning dozens of logs with the times and dates of each annoying cluckfest.
“[It’s] early morning noise misery,” Auerbach wrote in a letter to a town official. “We are at our wit’s end. There is a simple fix — remove the damn rooster from the property.”
The complaints resulted in a months-long town investigation and the bird’s owner being hit with a rare noise-nuisance violation, officials said, according to court papers. However, the town didn’t remove Brownie, who is continuing to crow uncontrollably each morning, Auerbach said.
Airbnb accusation
But Mayorga’s daughter, Ana Nunez, contends Auerbach started the battle because he simply wants to Airbnb the home to the pool-party set.
She said Auerbach sent her family a threatening letter that falsely claimed to be from a lawyer and that he has honked his car horn and shouted at them over the rooster. “Complainant states that Auerbach has . . . given her fake documents claiming to be from his attorney,” an East Hampton Town police officer wrote in a report, according to the East Hampton Star.
“He’s creating a nuisance. It’s harassment by him delivering a fake lawyer’s letter . . . That’s a crime,” Nunez, who herself is an attorney, told The Post. “This is what an animal does.”
Auerbach could not immediately be reached for comment on the fake-letter claim.