Smelly? Yes. Illegal? No.

Apex said sheep OK because they were pets

APEX -- Animal control officers and town zoning police stood aside and let David Watts transform his rickety suburban home into a shepherd's hut.

They shrugged as Watts' neighbors complained about the animals' flies and pungent perfume of droppings. Nothing to do, they said over and over, as long as Watts kept them as pets instead of livestock.

"I think this is mainly a clash of cultures more than any ... violations of any town codes," wrote Apex zoning officer Steve Yates after a 2002 complaint.

Watts, secure under the blanket of official acceptance, expanded his tiny backyard flock into a menagerie of 77 sheep, according to police. They crowded onto his suburban backyard on West Moore Street and roamed on the first floor of his house.

Animal control officers and town police said they had no idea he was a bad shepherd until they walked into his house Monday and found dozens of neglected sheep.

Watts, who has been charged with animal cruelty, has denied neglecting his flock. He said he simply was overwhelmed with pregnant ewes and tiny lambs in need of constant care.

Watts, 47, thrived in Apex for years because, until Monday, Wake County animal control officers never found any problems with the way he cared for his animals. Town zoning officials came to regard him as an eccentric with rights.

"In hindsight, it's an easy call to make that we dropped the ball," Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly said Wednesday. "But in the context of each of those situations, it's a more difficult call to make."

Watts, a land speculator, said he built his flock slowly over the past decade, mostly on property far away from his 0.39-acre lot in downtown Apex.

By 2002, though, he had a stable of pets at the house that included sheep and chickens, according to town records. That made his property stink of animal feces, his next-door neighbor told the Town Council.

Town zoning officials said that was OK because town law does not bar residents from keeping livestock as pets.

"If the owner were actually raising the animals to sell (farm use), then he would be in violation, but he appears to be keeping the animals for his own personal enjoyment and use," Yates wrote May 24, 2002.

Watts' neighbors disagreed. Chickens ran up and down the street. The smell of dung occasionally filled the air. Flies were everywhere.

"I've reported it to everybody I knew to report it to," said Clyde Ragan, who lives across the street from Watts. "One girl told me, 'As long as they keep their animals fed and watered there's nothing we can do.' That just irritated me because I felt that there was something that could be done."

'Alternative lifestyle'

Once every few months, one of Watts' neighbors would call town hall to complain about the smell or the condition of his house, his yard or his cars. Usually, town records show, the people sent to check it out could not find anything illegal about the state of Watts' property.

They noted, though, that he and his former girlfriend were not typical suburbanites.

"The folks that own that property enjoy an 'alternative lifestyle,' " Yates wrote last fall. "They like a natural landscaping over a highly maintained yard. They have a lot of old-fashioned plants, vines and perennials, and vegetables. I really do believe that they keep the animals as pets."

Town leaders discussed a crackdown on Watts last fall after receiving an e-mail message in August from neighbor Angie Fowler, who complained about the "barnyard" smell "permeating" the neighborhood.

Plans were quickly shelved, though, after Town Attorney Hank Fordham determined that Watts would be exempt from any new livestock ban the Town Council might consider because he already had the animals on his property.

In the meantime, Watts brought dozens more sheep to his house.

Police decided to check on him after one of his neighbors called to say that one of Watts' sheep had snuck up on her while she was picking up the paper in her front yard.

Watts, they discovered, had given over the first floor of the house to his sheep. Some were tiny lambs, others were adults with such painfully overgrown and infected hooves they had to walk on their knees.

Soon after Wake County Animal control officers confiscated the animals, town leaders were drafting a production livestock ban.

With the animals gone, Fordham said, the law would keep anybody from bringing more barnyard animals to town.

The Town Council expects to start discussing the ban Tuesday.

"We should have probably gone ahead and made sure that we had an ordinance to prohibit multiple farm animals on a city lot," Weatherly said. "We're going to do that now."