Weirdo Neighbors

[Jim Koepke]

In my case it may have always been me as the weirdo neighbor.

We used to live on a court in a residential area and had corn growing in our front yard because the back yard didn't get as much sun.

For a while we kept a goat, then muscovy ducks. They really aren't ducks, they just look a lot like ducks.

One family moved in next door and they were a rather extended family that felt it was okay to block other folks driveways and have people sleeping in cars at night. That was one of our main incentives for moving away upon my retirement. We sold that house last November.

jtk

[Chase Mueller]

You sound like a neighbor I'd like to have! I'm a huge animal guy, and keep reptiles and other creepy things. I miss having a ferret, little klepto, but super fun.

[andrew whicker]

I have roommates / tenants. My house is zoned as single family, but really the house is a duplex. I rent it to my friends as a duplex. The driveway is narrow, so I get the driveway and the couple downstairs parks their cars on the street.

I came home to a city warning that was filed by an anonymous neighbor. It basically amounted to someone being angry with the parking situation, but using other reasons to get their point across. So, I'm totally legal because I meet the X amt of strangers allowed in a single family home zoning rule.

However, since they filed the complaint anonymously, I have no idea which neighbor we are pissing off. Therefore, I can take no corrective action. City doesn't care where on the street anyone parks eitiher. Moral of story: Just communicate.

[Chase Mueller]

Communication is a key that most people throw away cause they can't remember what the darn thing was for

[Carlos Alvarez]

Moral of story: Just communicate.

Years ago we bought a large boat that needed a bunch of work. We towed it home from far away, and arrived on a Friday. My intention was to book a storage space first thing Monday and move it there, since obviously it wouldn't be legal to leave it parked in my driveway/yard. Early on Saturday morning, a neighbor a few houses away comes over SCREAMING straight off about how the boat can't be there, and she's already called the police and the city, and we're horrible people and more and more and more. I mean, she ranted about the previous tenants, who apparently were pigs, and mixed us into that somehow.

I laughed. She asked me when I was going to move the boat, and as I took a breath to answer, she started the tirade again saying it must be moved today. I laughed, and ducked down into the bilge again. I didn't actually get one word out.

She somehow got a city inspector to come out on Sunday morning. He was not happy with her. He said that it was actually perfectly legal to leave the boat there as long as we wanted, except that I had to move it forward a foot because one tire was in the yard. The only legal requirement was that all tires be on pavement. The boat could overhang (and it did, a lot) but the tires just had to be off the yard. I did that, and then left the boat there for many weeks. She'd walk by and stand on the sidewalk with hands on her hips and shaking her head. It sure was convenient to do work on it at home when I had some random free time instead of driving somewhere to do it. I would just smile and wave.

[Chase Mueller]

Oh goodie, there was a happy ending! I love it when people fly off the handle and get too big for their britches, only to be wrong

[Thomas L Carpenter]

Most of these stories sound like neighbors that are retired and bored. Nothing more fun than yelling at younger folks for imagined issues. If I ever get bored with woodworking maybe I'll try yelling at my neighbors.

[Bert Kemp]

Idon't see anything weird about this. Guys dogs got loose and he asked if you saw them, when he said one was a yellow lab you just drove off thats the weird part to me. Why did you drive off. He was just asking if you saw his dogs???

Y'all ever have small interactions with neighbors that just kinda make you wonder if they're ok in the head? Yesterday, on my way home from work I was flagged down by a big truck. He began to inquire as to whether or not I saw his two dogs running around with their leash still on. I told him I was unsure if it had a leash, but I saw a medium build dog near the entrance that was roaming and asked if it was sort of greyish blue, he not only said yes, but very enthusiastically. I told him I thought it was a good looking dog from what I saw, and told him how fond of Pit Bulls I am, to which he dropped his head and said, "Oh, that's not mine then, I'm looking for my Lab and Aussie". "Oh.. what kinda Lab?" "Yellow."

... I just drove off.
Anyone else got any weird neighbor stories? I have plenty
"Like a good neighbor, stay over there"

[Mark Blatter]

A couple of years ago we had a pretty strong wind storm. My neighbor gets on top of his house, a tall two story house, with his electric blower to clean off a few small branches that were on the shingles. To me, that is a little bit to anal retentive. He has five or six 50 - 60' tall cottonwood trees, so these were the small branches with 5 - 20 leaves on each one. If he had given it a few days they would have blown off by themselves. He was so meticulous about getting every single leaf off his roof. That was a little strange in my opinion.

The flip side is that I think of antics I pulled as a kid, and well, suffice it to say, I and my brother/cousins were pretty much hoodlums back in the day. And today, I do things that are deliberately strange just to annoy/puzzle a different neighbor who is the only one that can see into my back yard. Like opening up a 12' ladder in the middle of the yard for no good reason and leaving it sit there for a week. At least some 'strange behavior' is other's way of playing with our minds.

[Jerome Stanek]

When I first moved in the next door neighbor that moved in about a month before me came over and demanded that I sell him half of my lot so no one could build on it. He was a real pain trying to sue everybody. This was 40 years ago and I see he is still at the sue game only in the city.

[Robbie Buckley]

Years ago we bought a large boat that needed a bunch of work. We towed it home from far away, and arrived on a Friday. My intention was to book a storage space first thing Monday and move it there, since obviously it wouldn't be legal to leave it parked in my driveway/yard.

Why on earth would it be illegal to leave a boat in your own yard?

[Frederick Skelly]

Why on earth would it be illegal to leave a boat in your own yard?

Dont know about Carlos' case, obviously. But some places Stateside have deed restrictions or even laws "intended" to keep the neighborhood or city looking nice. Like a lot of things, these can get carried away or have unintended consequences. (And they can be very controversial. Lotta guys here said in a previous thread they refused to live in such neighborhoods or cities.) My neighbor had a boat in his driveway and the neighborhood association made him put it in his backyard behind a tall fence.

[Chase Mueller]

Idon't see anything weird about this. Guys dogs got loose and he asked if you saw them, when he said one was a yellow lab you just drove off thats the weird part to me. Why did you drive off. He was just asking if you saw his dogs???

Read closer. He was giving answers about the color of one, and changed it. Like he didn't even notice that he changed his answer.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

I could write a book. Around the farm, we have 17 adjoining property owners. Most with 1 acre parcels that were cut off from the farm 35 yrs ago. Caught a kid riding his dirt bike in my hay field, tearing things up. Stopped him and escorted the 14 yr old home. Spoke to his father about it, the father said, " Geesh it is just a field. Where is he supposed to ride?" I bought a 7 acre adjoining lot in late May, crops reserved until the end of the season. It was corn. Within a week, the neighbor's kid started riding the lawn tractor across the lot, tearing up and smashing all the corn seedlings. So I call the farmer that owned the crops and the kid got charged and convicted of agricultural vandalism. After the corn was harvested, I had the lot surveyed and then started putting up pasture fence, starting with the posts. Along one particular neighbor, the posts disappeared one night. Put some of the posts back and the neighbor's boyfriend shows up and just walks out into my new pasture and points at the ground and claims the survey pin was 40 feet further into the pasture than it actually was. Police get called. Cops show up and start talking about charging me with trespassing. I take the police officer over and show the officer where the survey corner pin is complete with the surveyor's cap. The neighbor comes out and tells the cops that she watched me put that in that morning. Then i point out that the line for the back of all of the subdivided off lots is a straight line that goes on for 6 lots and houses. Then she tells the cop she bought the property privately from Mr. X the previous owner, but she never got the deed from his attorney. I then point out that that her lot was sold to her by the estate of Mr X, so he had died before she even bought her lot. I pulled out a copy of her deed and showed the cop that the estate was the seller. The police officer then announces that it is a civil matter for attorney's to straighten out. That afternoon, the her kid starts oiling rocks in the "disputed territory" and a week later, Her boyfriend puts up a fence out to where they claim she bought. I filed suit against her and she never answered, so I got a default judgment against her, waited until the appeal month ran, and then backed up the tractor and pulled out her fence. I then used the front end loader to push all the debris onto her yard. Cops show up again. This time I have a court order that the property is mine. Her boy friend shows up and challenges me to a fight to settle it like real men. I found out a week earlier that he is a police officer in a nearby city. So I definitely decline the invitation. I get my fence put up and one day, I find a pipe exposed after the animals nibbled down the grass. But this is in another place. It had obviously been there for some time. I go to the county farm agency and start looking at the annual aerial photos. The neighbor apparently ran a drain pipe from her garage out under ground into my pasture. I found an aerial picture from 11 years earlier that shows a line of disturbed soil/grass across her lawn. So I got a copy of the picture and stopped for a bag of sakrete on the way home. I shoved a pound of frozen beef liver into the pipe and then sealed it shut with concrete. Noticed her garage door open a few days later. Seems it was open for a few weeks. A year later, I noticed her kid was washing something on the garage floor. Within an hour or two, I saw hem using a push broom to push soapy water out of the garage onto the driveway. Trash and small car parts start showing up in my pasture but only along that line. One night the kid gets drunk and backs his car through my fence. I called the police and he ended up in violation of probation for an earlier DUI and gets another three months in the county hotel. My mail box gets shot up, somebody keeps dropping wire on my electric strands to short out the fence., and then one night, about 4 am I hear a terrible clanging noise and the stock is just all upset running wildly across the pasture. So I go out, grab my wife's horse and walk the horse keeping the horse between me and the noise. As we get closer, I can hear the neighbor woman cussing and carrying on. She is holding a piece of metal against my fence and hitting the metal with a hammer. At this point I am about twenty feet away and I shine the flash light on her. The crazy woman collapses. I call an ambulance and they take her to the hospital. She had a lawn mower blade and a hammer and was apparently trying to cut my fence. She gets hauled away to the hospital and I figured I better get a camera and take pictures. Sure enough, I get a call from the county detective that she is claiming I tried to scare her to death. I sent him a copy of the pictures of the hammer, blade and bent up fence. Never hear from him again. Neighbor puts house up for sale and moves. YEAH!

[Chase Mueller]

Dude... I think you win man. You sure did have a lot of patience. I don't know I would have had as much restraint. Definitely would have tried to get the cop fired though. Threats against civilians is a nono