Please excuse me if this is an inappropriate posting, but I gotta talk to someone.

Also excuse me if it's entirely tooooo long-winded - one of my many faults.

As Dave Barry says, "I Am NOT Making This Up". Any of it.

My wife and I live in a blue-collar mid-western neighborhood in a house on the southwest corner of a four way intersection. We've been here for 4 years. Our neighbor immediatley across the street, on the southeast corner is driving us crazy. Hereinafter she will be referred to as "TNFH" or "The Neighbor From Hell"

Where to begin? We are not the most accomplished landscapers or Tim-the-Toolman-Taylor types. We both hold liberal arts and education degrees. Our house and yard, though presentable, are never going to win any Martha Stewart awards. But, the kids don't avoid it on Halloween either.

The neighborhood we are in changes radically from house to house and block to block as far as lawn care and home repair and even personal hygene are concerned. Multiple Harley's, high intensity night lighting, iron grills on doors and lower windows, wood-frame houses in need of a painting or aluminum or vinyl sideing, untrimmed bushes, un-mowed lawns, are not uncommon around here, o.k.? On the other hand, there are small but neat houses with very nice landscaping too.

Since we moved in, no one, I mean NO ONE has taken the inititive to introduce themselves to us. We have managed to introduce ourselves to the neighbor to our right. In fact today we called a cab for the wife's drunken brother and helped the husband get into his back yard by loaning him a six foot step ladder which he used to get over his privacy fence into his back yard. He promptly returned it and thanked us, if somewhat embarrassedly.

The older lady in the house on the north west corner has spoken to us a bit and we have seen her in the local bookstore and library and when her husband passed away recently we went to the wake and funeral services. A teenage boy whose older sister was killed by her boy friend two years ago, has sort of adopted me, letting me help him fix his bike, soliciting my opinion on what kind of boots he should buy and so on. He mows our lawn every other week and has shoveled snow from time to time. My wife took him, his brother and a friend to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where I work, to spend the day. Not only had he never been there, he wasn't even aware that it was in Chicago.

Now, the neighbor on the southeast corner, TNFH, has apparently taken it upon herself to force the rest of the neighborhood, or at least the occupants of the houses I've mentioned, to conform to her idea of the way a neighborhood should be. She has a well manicured lawn and flowers and her house is nice if modest. She does tend to yell at her daughter a bit too much for my liking, but I'm not a parent either.

Before she ever spoke to my wife or myself, our first summer here, she called the city "code enforcement" folks and complained about our lawn and the weeds in the alley and driveway which she cannot even see from her house. We recieved a form in the mail citeing us with various code violations and a month within which to rectify them. This has happened more than once. On one occassion we actually saw the code enforcement person and spoke to him. It was then we found out that TNFH been doing this kind of thing for a long long long time. The code enforcement people recognize her voice - she's called them so much. Eventually we found out that TNFH wasn't doing it to just us.

Over the past several years, we have determined through conversations with members of the community and our immediate neighbors, that TNFH has been doing this sort of thing to them, since she moved in. TNFH has made the lives of those around her miserable.

The elderly woman who's husband died? She had a large travel trailer parked in her back yard - not a mobile home, but one of those tow-behind campers -large but not monstrous. TNFH called the police insisting that they cite the old lady for allowing someone to live in the trailer. As it turns out, it belonged to her son-in-law who owns the elderly womans house and lets her live there rent free, who didn't have room to park it in his back yard. He used it to store his tools since he was working on the house after his father-in-laws death to get it in a saleable conditon. Now he has had to move it.

Someone abandoned a van in the alley behind the elderly womans house and apparently it cought fire. The fire was extinguished by the local authorities, but the NFHA called the police about that too, again giving the police the impression that it was all the elderly woman's responsibility.

A contractor we called to inquire about installing a privacy fence acted a bit odd at first. Then when he came out to measure, he explained that he remembered the street but not the house number. He had done work for TNFH and told us it was the most unpleasant job he'd ever had. He was worried that we were her - as he couldn't remember her house #.

We couldn't afford to install the fence, so we put in plastic privacy slats we bought at a local hardware store to at least partially obscure her view of our property.

In May we recieved an anonymous letter with no return address warning us that TNFH might be "using" an elderly woman in the neighbor hood as a "spy". The elderly woman is apparently, what some call " a bit touched" and is unaware of the neighbors ulterior motives.

Everything came to a head Moday.

My wife is to cats what some folks are with chocolte. We have been trapping stray cats in the neighbor hood - believe me, there are DOZENS of 'em, and taking them to the vet to have them spayed or neutered. NONE of the cats have had i.d. tags. We only trap them AFTER we have seen them visiting our yard for several days (or nights, usually). This may seem un-ethical, but considering the lives of feral and stray cats in this industrial area with winters that achieve sub-zero temperatures, and considering that Animal Control will not respond to stray cat calls - we know, that's how this all started - it seems to be the only way to control the population in this area.

We have payed for this ourselves. It ain't cheap. We release the cats after their stitches are healed, usually 3-5 days for the males with dissolvable stitches, a week or so for the females. Some of the cats have adopted us - they stayed and now live in our house and garage and back yard. Altogether there are 15. To be honest, I have lost count of how many cats we have trapped and neutered and released never to see them again. Eight of the cats live in our house and the rest migrate between our basement and the garage and the yard, and until recently, the neighborhood. The migrating bunch are slowly, slowly returning to domesticity. They trust my wife, who feeds them and occassionlly will allow me to pet some of them, but for the most part, they are feral.

We are active in the local chapter of the Humane Society. When TNFH's dog died we commiserated with her. She now has two dogs. Monday Animal Control came out and went through the entire neighbor hood issuing citations for unlicensed pets and so on. They cited us for unlicensed cats and pointed out that they must be restrained. So, we've invested about $700.00 or so in a do-it-yourself chain link kennel in an effort to contain the more feral of the colony. TNFH was not cited. Almost without exception, all the neighbors in the neighborhood recieved some form of citation or another. We recieved an anonymous phone-call from someone who was cited complaining that it was all the fault of "your f**king cats" and that "if you ever threaten anybody again I'll squash you like an ant."

We have gone to the police to have the call traced and to get a restriningorder issued against the caller, assuming the call did not come form a pay phone. It has been reported that TNFH was seen talking to the Animal Control officer at 9:15 a.m on Monday morning. Under the circumstances it is not unbeleivable that she started the whole thing. I was at home alone when the Animal Control officer came around issuing citations at about 3:00 p.m. She spoke to me and my wife saw her vehicle when she arrived home at 3:30 or so. TNFH was talking with the officer animatedly. The officer had told me, they had recived a number of complaints about stray cats in the area. My wife was unaware of what was going on exactly. She spoke with the officer and engaged in a polite discussion with the officer and TNFH without my knowledge. I happened to see the three of them talking in front of TNFH's house and crossed the street to see what was up.

It was hot. I have a very full beard. My wife has joked that we'll never get through O'Hare airport because I look like such a terrorist. Apparently TNFH interpreted my squinting grimace as a threatening glare. I am not a large man. in fact TNFH probably out weighs me by 20 - 40 lbs. We believe it was her boyfirend who made the call based on the phrase "if you threaten anyone in this neighborhood again...."

O.k. please excuse any typos or unclear rambling sentences and so on. This isn't a rant. I want to know if anyone else has had such experiences and what if anything anyone can suggest - besides moving- which we are indeed considering.

-- Anonymous, September 05, 1999

Answers

Do you know that joke about the two campers awakened in the middle of the night by a hungry bear? The one camper sees the other one putting on his running shoes and says, "You can't outrun a bear!"

The other runner replies, "I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you." I got news for you, Sean. TNFH is a hungry bear, and right now you're the slowest camper.

This woman doesn't feel appreciated for all of the work she's put in her home, and she's taking it out on you. Start by looking for something outstanding in the presentation of her home, and compliment her on it at your first opportunity. Then make sure you've done the same thing to your home before she blows up again. Then build on that.

-- Anonymous, September 06, 1999