Ah, neighbors.
On my east property line, the previous owners of my property put up a 6' high alternating picket privacy-like fence (head-on, you can't see through it, but look through at a 45* angle, and you can see right through). Over the winter, we had some serious wind storms with gusts up to 80 mph. A 24' section of that fence blew down onto the neighbor's property. A few weeks later, she called me asking how long it was going to take me to repair the fence, and to let me know that she had no money to help with the repairs, but it was my fence because it was on my property.
The fence is in line with 9 other neighbor's various fence types that distinguish everyone's property lines. So, somehow, the 6' fence is "clearly" on my property, is my responsibility when money is needed for repairs, but 100 linear feet of it suited my neighbor just fine as the west fence for her horse corral, which was kept illegally, as her property is too small to keep a horse on. While doing the repairs, I found that her horse had chewed up 80 pickets on her side of "my" fence. It also appears that the reason for that 24' section of fence blowing over is that 2 fence posts rotted at the ground. The 2 posts that rotted are smack dab in the middle of a spot that I found full of raw sewage that had been bubbling up to the surface above her leach field in her horse corral, and was flowing onto my property. I had to use a bunch of good topsoil to lay a berm along my side of the fence line to stop the flow of sewage onto my property. I never got an apology - all she did was switch over to the other leach field, and still to this day, no septic repairs have been made. I believe her septic system is failing as a result of her running a hair salon (illegally) out of her house. The septic system was certainly never designed for those kinds of loads on it, as we are not zoned for a business of that type.
To the north of my property, a couple purchased the neighbor's house and immediately began a renovation project. Once my house renovation began, I brought in a porta-potty for the guys on my project. Since bringing it in, the workers from the neighbor's property have been climbing over the split rail fence to use the porta-potty. I finally went to the owner the other day and asked that she pay me half of the cost of the rental since her crews were using the porta-potty, even though they told me that they wouldn't need to use it since there was a working toilet in that house.
The owner explained that there was no reason for her workers to use the porta-potty since she had a working toilet, and that she would tell them to stop. I explained that that was fine, but they had been getting more use out of it than my crew was for a month and a half, and I would appreciate some financial compensation. She said "your guys need to pee more then" and walked away. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
Another neighbor to my east asked me (when I was putting up my split rail fence with wire mesh in the back yard to keep my dog in the yard), to leave enough room between my property and the neighbor to the south's horse corral so that he could get a truck up the other neighbor's driveway, and across my property to access his back yard (he's got plenty of room to drive a truck around either side of his house on his own property). He's the one who damaged my leach field by driving a truck over it before I bought the property, and when putting the fence up, I found fairly fresh dually ruts on the edge of my leach field. I have since added a bunch of trees, and firewood to that corner of the property to ensure he can't get a truck in there.
I could go on, but I think this is enough ranting. Sometimes people just amaze me. I guess I've got to stop being so nice, since it seems that there are a lot of jerks out there in the world.
