Can’t we all just get along? No, says the petty neighbor. Here, these people had enough of their conniving neighbors and share the brilliant ways they fought back.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
Bump In The Road
“This took place in Central Florida. The lawns were St Augustine grass that with a lot of water, mulching, and fertilizer, grew a couple of inches a week.
My neighbor disliked me because I built a 2 story house and that blocked his view of the lake. He also didn’t like me because we worked for the same company and he was upset that I was hired in at a management level although he didn’t work for me.
Our lawns were about a 1/3 acre, so a Saturday cut and trim would easily take 3 hours with a normal lawn mower.
My neighbor bought a basic riding lawnmower, and he would drive his mower on my property, up to 5′ before making a U-Turn. That was OK, except he would intentionally make the hard turn on top of my sprinklers. Almost every week, I had to replace the broken PVC pipe, digging up my lawn.
I tried several things to dissuade him, but in the end on a Friday night, I brought home about twenty inches of high-strength braided steel cabling. It was the smallest diameter I could find. I uncoiled it surrounding the sprinkler heads pushing down into the tall grass so you would never see it. I was in my garage when I knew he ran over it. The racket it made was frightening.
Even a twenty-five-inch blade on a 10 HP motor couldn’t cut it. But it did wrap it around the shaft and stalled the motor. I couldn’t hide my evil grin once I saw that twenty feet of the cable were gone from my yard.
In the end, my neighbor had to push his mower to the garage and spent the rest of the day disassembling his mower to untangle the mess.
That was the last time he went on my lawn.”
Revenge Served Cold
“A nearby neighbor kicked my joyful Weimaraner so hard he broke his back. My dog had gotten out, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Even after rushing my dog to the emergency vet, my dog’s injuries were too great and my beloved innocent pet had to be euthanized. The neighbor had a brother-in-law that worked at the local Sheriff’s Department and they chose to do nothing.
At about the same time, I had trapped a half a dozen large rats in my horse barn. I stuck them in the freezer as I devised a plan.
On Christmas morning, when I knew my neighbor was at his parents’ house, I went and threw the dead rats, far in each direction, from the one central opening in the skirting around the crawl space of his trailer-trash trailer. As the cherry on top, I left one in front of his front door to greet him when he got home.
He may not have even known it was me. It was the effect I was after.”
“It’s Mine Now”
“I’m sure I’m going to get some negative feedback from this.
I live on a farm that’s divided by a wooden fence. My neighbors are close but all the other neighbors are a good distance away. My neighbors moved in a few years ago and their youngest daughter is an entitled little brat.
My dogs are never alone outside. If I’m not with them then, I put them in their pens. In contrast, my neighbor’s dogs run all over my place and it’s frustrating because one of them bites and the other kills cats.
I have caught the little girl throwing dog poop from her yard into mine on several occasions. I have even caught her throwing trash in my yard. I finally said something to the girl’s parents about the dogs doing bad things at my house so they have kept them penned. Despite this, the little girl still let them loose on purpose whenever she thought I wasn’t home.
One time, I had my car in the shop so my sister gave me a ride home. The little brat thought I was gone, so she took out her shovel and proceeded to throw dog poop in my yard. Seizing the opportunity, I snuck out my back door and went into my barn. I have four full-sized mannequins in my barn that are my best friends. I took one of the mannequins and carried it right by my barn door. Once the little brat was close enough with her shovel of poop I opened the door and held the mannequin out the door and said in a scary voice, ‘GET OUT!’
The little brat dropped her shovel, screamed, and ran back to her house. I hope she crapped her pants.
Anyway, I took the shovel it’s mine now.”
Going Somewhere?
“We moved into a new apartment and encountered the neighbor from hell.
He threatened to call the police on my eleven-year-old son and his friend for sitting on the low wall outside the block because he considered it ‘loitering.’ Our neighbor made nasty remarks to our children whenever he saw them in the street and he photographed them from his balcony to document ‘proof’ of wrongdoing.
He was well-known in the area for his obnoxious behavior. This man was one of the most spiteful poisonous individuals I ever met. My husband confronted him a few times but he ran inside and closed his door because he was both a coward and anti-social.
One day, my husband had had enough. He went to the local hardware shop and bought several tubes of industrial-strength glue. At 2 am, when the street was quiet, my husband went downstairs and glued our neighbor’s garage door to the concrete driveway. We got up early the next morning to watch the fun when he tried to open his garage door and waved to him when he heard our laughter and looked up at our balcony. Our neighbor knew who did it but couldn’t prove it. After this, he stopped harassing our kids and avoided us until we moved out. It is impossible to describe how deeply satisfying this was, we laughed about it for years.”
A Parting Gift
“When we were out of town one weekend, our home was broken into.
There had been a snowstorm that night and the police photographed footprints leading from our front door to our neighbor’s house four doors down before the footprints stopped.
The police were pretty sure that the culprit was our neighbor’s teenage son, who had previously been in trouble for other petty crimes. The next day, my husband went and knocked on their door and told the parents how we would be willing to forget everything if we could just have our home videos and camcorder back. All of our home videos were in the case the camcorder was in. These videos included birthday parties, Christmas, and other precious moments.
My husband pleaded with our neighbors, but they were a-holes to him and denied their son having anything to do with the break-in. We could never prove that it was the son besides those footprints the police found, so we were never able to get the videos or the camcorder back.
Anyway, we moved out a few years later. My husband later told me that on his last trip to move our stuff, he had stopped at their yard and dumped some chemicals into all their bushes on the way out of the neighborhood.”
