Ok, let me begin by saying that I have some VERY strange neighbors, that said, let me tell you what is going on:
The problem seems to stem back to before I got chickens. We live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, and the town is so tiny that it's only about 4 blocks long and 3 blocks wide. Only about 50 people live in town, and each property has a full acre of land so the neighbors aren't exactly on top of each other. I have living next door to me a lady in her 40's, single, with a little boy that is only a few months younger than my younger daughter, so I believe he will be 10 very soon. He's a lonely little boy because the mother doesn't allow him off his property to play. He was excited when we first moved in because kids were going to be living next door to him, but as soon as his mother saw that it was GIRLS living in the house, she had a billion excuses as to why her son couldn't play with my daughters. Later on we learned that she doesn't let him play with girls.
Also I heard it through the grapevine that she was acting predjudiced toward my older daughter because she's darker complected, and apparently if you are darker complected, that makes you Mexican, and no one around here likes Mexicans.
I'm Irish American and my children's father is Puerto Rican American, ok? My kids don't speak Spanish, and my older daughter looks so much like me it's scary. But she has dark hair, dark eyes, and gets a gorgeous tan in the summers, so therefore she's Mexican. Idiots. When asked what nationality she is, she smiles softly and says Irish, and then walks away leaving them scratch their heads. My daughter has a sarcastic streak that she also inherited from me. Anyway, so her son has stood on the edge of their property staring sadly at my kids playing for 2 years now, and has only gotten to play with my kids maybe 4 times, and only one of those times was when the mom was home. Ok, so last year I got chickens. No big deal, right? She even came over to grab one of her cats late last Fall and stopped to say that she had grown up on a farm and used to have chickens and ducks, and that she liked them a lot and if she had more property, she'd have some (has the same amount of land as me though,
) Well, it was around the end of summer, beginning of fall when my birds, who had been pretty good about staying in my yard, noticed that she has nice shady pine trees at the back of her property. And so my little feathered brats would bolt for her trees and sit under them. Someone even laid an egg under one of the trees once! But I would shoo my birds back into my yard so they didn't bother her too much. I made the decision last summer that we needed some sort of fencing, but I didn't know then what kind I wanted to get, so with winter coming, we locked the birds up and limited their out time. Over the winter though I divided my flock, separating the standards and bantams. My standard rooster though makes a bee line for her porch the moment he's out, and takes all 9 of his ladies with him, and so I was always chasing them back onto my lawn. I didn't want them eating up all her cat food when she has so darn many cats and she doesn't feed them enough as it is. Well, this was a bad winter for me physically. I've been in so much pain with my feet (plantas fasciitis) that walking for any length of time is excrutiating, and so my kids took over management of the birds until I could get the pain under control. Well, being that they are kids, they had a bad habit of opening the door, letting the birds out, and then walking away. Course they'd run straight for the neighbor's porch. I'd apologize and make my kids bring the birds back and lock them up. And so finally we found a good, LARGE fencing, and we bought it last week. It arrived Wednesday, but it was raining, so we waited til the weather was nicer Friday morning, and we put it up. It's clearly visible from her yard, and when her mom arrived Friday afternoon to wait for the boy to get home from school (she babysits him every day), she got out of her car, stopped, looked at the fencing, and then continued on into the house. So I know she saw it. Later, my neighbor came home, stopped as she got out of her truck, looked at the fence, and then went into her house. So they saw it. I figured good, now it will help to keep things neutral between us. I felt like a bad neighbor up until that point. Now, that fence has been in place for 2 days now, and today my mom tells me she is hearing hammering out her bedroom window and tells me to go look out my window. So I do, and what do I see? I see my neighbor hammering signs up onto the old dilapidated barn that sits at the edge of her property and mine. One she hammered onto the side of the barn, facing my house so that no one will see it BUT us. It says PRIVATE PROPERTY. Ok, I get the picture. Then I looked at the front of the shed and there's a yellow sign that says NO TRESSPASSING-KEEP OUT. And so at this point I'm scratching my head and thinking to myself, if we were such a problem, why didn't she put these signs up last year when the birds first started running onto her lawn? My kids never step foot onto her property for any reason other than to retreive a bird. So, why wait until 2 days AFTER I put the fencing up to post her little signs? I am both amused at her ignorance, and irritated by it. I don't know how, or IF I should handle the situation. Now, she has dozens of cats that are all outdoor cats. Take a guess who they come begging food from, and where they poop. Yup, our yard. Not to mention that I made a big mistake last summer when one of her cats lunged at my younger daughter and bit her in the arm. My kid wasn't bothering the cat, but it still lunged at her. Nicked an artery too and my kid was spurting blood like Buckingham Fountain in downtown Chicago. Took forever before I got the bleeding to stop. My mistake was not saying something to her because I didn't want more problems than we already were having at the time. The cat came onto MY property and bit my daughter too. My daughter was not even anywhere near her yard. The cat is still around too, and looks like death warmed over. My daughter healed fine, but that's not the point. I find the signs offensive, though I'm not exactly sure why. If any of you were in my situation, how would you handle it? At the moment I'm awaiting the arrival of quite a few trees and bushes, and I'm thinking I have the perfect spot for one, right under my mother's bedroom window, in front of that PRIVATE PROPERTY sign. My first thought though was to post an equally large sign aimed directly at her house so she can see it plain as day that reads: All cats that come on my property will be deemed a threat and shot on sight! But I feel that I would be stooping to her level if I did that. And I don't have the heart to shoot any of her cats. Granted I don't like most of the little poop machines, I do like one little girl a lot, and I like when she comes over for food and belly rubs. That kitty is VERY pregnant right now (yeah, she NEVER spays or neuters her cats, so a lot of them are inbred), so we've been putting out extra food on our property for her where the weird neighbor can't see it. I don't know what to do. Any suggestions?
Here is a picture from inside the fence we put up. You can see my house straight ahead, and that's her house and shed to the left in the picture. I took this yesterday, before all this nonsense began:
The problem seems to stem back to before I got chickens. We live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, and the town is so tiny that it's only about 4 blocks long and 3 blocks wide. Only about 50 people live in town, and each property has a full acre of land so the neighbors aren't exactly on top of each other. I have living next door to me a lady in her 40's, single, with a little boy that is only a few months younger than my younger daughter, so I believe he will be 10 very soon. He's a lonely little boy because the mother doesn't allow him off his property to play. He was excited when we first moved in because kids were going to be living next door to him, but as soon as his mother saw that it was GIRLS living in the house, she had a billion excuses as to why her son couldn't play with my daughters. Later on we learned that she doesn't let him play with girls.
Here is a picture from inside the fence we put up. You can see my house straight ahead, and that's her house and shed to the left in the picture. I took this yesterday, before all this nonsense began:
