The landlord game

After over thirty years of being a landlord, I've decided to hang it up and sell. Part of it is my health, I can no longer do the heavy lifting necessary to remodel apartments. handling sheetrock, building walls, replacing floors is stuff my body can no longer handle. Spinal surgery will do that to a kid.
I could hire people to do the work. The problem I have run into is dishonest workers. Creative swindlers who create more work, then charge out the ying yang to fix what they probably messed up.
The big thing though has been the quality of tenants. I remodeled an apartment, then rented it to two women. Pretty soon they had boy fiends. One slapped his lady around and got arrested. The other gal moved to get away from the drama and take her mega drama with her. Then the first gal took her abuser back, got abused again, fled, and left him in the place. In three months it was worse than when I decided to remodel the place. Doors smashed, floors ruined and holes punched in the walls. The repair bill had not been recouped, and I was having to start all over.
At that point I decided it was time to hang it up and stick with the work I could handle, contracting out to others.
I kept two places. They are not near the college. One is in a small town, and the other is rural. It is a duplex and just across from a development.
Well, I rented the basement apartment to a couple of fellows. One bedroom. One guy had the bedroom, the other slept n the living room. Then the one guy's brothers moved in, and vola, I had four people in a one bedroom. I should have booted em then and there. I didn't. My mega mistake.
Not long after, his mom and dad also moved in. Since I don't haunt the place, I wasn't aware they were living there, and frankly I couldn't fathom six adults in that tiny apartment. But wait, it gets better err worse. The boys had girl friends! So, what kind of woman would shack up in a place with a BUNCH of other crowded in folks? Low end of the scale. Welfare queens who got kicked off welfare for what ever reason. Never actually met any of the GF's, but heard about them through the grape vine. I'm tod that at one point, there were nine people living in the place. They were getting along pretty good with  the upstairs renter, so I wasn't getting complaints.
Now, the house is in the country. Not a farm, just the house and one building of what used to be a farm. Not the barn either, a small tractor shed. They asked if it would be all right to get some chickens. I said yes, a few would be tolerable. Chickens only! No roosters, no ducks, no other animals.
Bam Zing! they had chickens, roosters, ducks, turkeys, quail, pheasant. And Dogs! Did I mention dogs? I'd rented the place NO PETS because it had new carpet in it, and they had five dogs. I guess every redneck has to have his dogs. Mine is a Papillion.
By the time I realized all this was going on, the damage was done. I should have booted them on the spot, but I tried to be Mr. Nice Guy.
Well, the guy who was not a family member packed up and moved. Kinda funny in a way, looking back, since he was the one who had a vehicle that ran. Even after he left, they would be around in his car. Then the brother who was the original leaser moved out. He had a job, he paid the bills, but he got sick and tired of having to support his brothers and their poor choices of sex objects, and their rug rats. Things went south in a hurry. I got no rent in December. I have never booted some one in December. Tried, Court wouldn't do it, delayed the trial. January they gave my son a little, about half a month's rent and told him they'd have more the following Friday... Then avoided him like the plague.
I gave them their eviction notice on 1 Feb. Handed it to mom who told me she'd just gotten a new job and would have money on Friday. I said" make sure and call me. Phone never rang. Go figger. My lawyer is hard to get ahold of. She isn't always in the office, and if she is in court, which is a LOT, she has to turn it off, so they got a few extra days from that. Once I got the paper work to her, it was the express lane, and the trial was in eleven days. They never showed up. No surprise.
When the Sheriff showed up for the final eviction, they claimed they'd never received any notice. He was Mr nice guy though and gave them a couple extra days. We did the final removal last Sunday. Their first words, "we need a couple extra days." Not. Happening.
He told them it was time to go, and to strap every thing they had out onto their trailer and get off the property. An hour later, they had not put one rope on. At that point he told them they had five minutes, or he was arresting them for trespass, and I would keep their truck, trailer, and every thing they had on it. Oops! One of the deadbeat boys grabbed his cage of quail and sprinted across the road where he sat until a friend showed up, loaded the cage, and they left. They did get off the property in the five minutes though.
When they left, all the chickens were still in their coop. If you want to call it that. Well, almost all, several were roaming the yard having either managed to escape, or been let out for some reason. There were more than fifty birds there. That coop was a clap trap arrangement. It was pallets stood on edge, and intermingled. The whole affair was less than six feet across, and about sixteen feet long, then cased with rejected scraps of norboard. Part of it was an old tarp. No windows, no floor, a sheet of tin for a door. Only half was readily accessible, the roost, what served for one, was two pallets standing in the middle and that blocked access to the far side unless you crawled in the straw and muck in the bottom.
The occupants consisted of two turkeys. Huge Turkeys! Eleven ducks and a mix of various breeds of chickens. They had a ratio of roughly two hens per rooster. I counted twelve roosters in there. there were also two roosters running loose outside. They disappeared. Don't know if a dog got them, coyotes or coons. They may well have opted to find better digs. At any rate, on Monday morning they were no place to be seen.
Variety in a coop can be a nice thing, and they had plenty of variety. Several white leghorns, a Plymouth rock rooster, about five Americana roosters, one white bantee hen, six Polish Crested, five  Silkies, New Hampshire reds, and some that were clearly mixed breeds.
For a while they had the chickens in the old shed. Then they built several different coops. They made them from mostly discarded lumber, but also incorporated storm fencing, tarps and old tin.
Since they left them, and I don't really need more chickens, I guess I have a stack of fresh dinners. The roosters at least. I will probably sell the Polish and silkies.