'I better not see any of your garbage on this sidewalk ever again': Guy gets back at neighborhood kids for tossing junk over their fence

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 20, 2024 8:00 AM EST

Kids will be kids, but also petty neighbors will still be petty! In fact, there is perhaps no greater rivalry than a group of rebellious kids and a disgruntled adult neighbor with a knack for being petty. We empathize with this neighbor's predicament here because not only were these kids repeatedly littering just for the fun of it, but if their parents weren't going to teach them a lesson, who was? If not now, when? Am I right, reader?

This dude started to discover piles of trash on the sidewalk during his daily dog-walking duties. He later learned that a group of kids living at the nearby house thought it would be "fun" to toss a ton of household items over the fence. The bizarre part is that this was not a one-time thing, nor was it a brief phase. This went on for years, even as the kids grew older (but clearly, not wiser). So, what's a petty neighbor to do?

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  • 01
    "Try being their neighbor, it's like living by a dump."
    via Alvin Engler

  • This thread was posted to Reddit's r/pettyrevenge subreddit by u/monstersof-men, who finally had enough of these kids and started dumping the trash back over the fence. Eventually, the items got bigger and more fragile, but at this point, OP did not care. Keep scrolling below to learn what finally put a stop to this nonsense. For more stories like this, check out this post about some neighborly snow-blowing revenge.

  • 02
    Children were playing "let's dump all our over the fence" for years. I joined and won. I have lived in my neighbourhood for six years. I run daily and walk the dog daily, when it's not -45C out, but since it's a newer area there aren't many paths. So I take basically the same sidewalks every single day.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 03
    About four years ago I noticed there'd always be a pile of the sidewalk behind a specific home. We're talking a basketball, pair of shoes, half of some plastic toy, an umbrella, etc. Really random groupings of everyday life detritus, always on the sidewalk, always behind this house. on
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 04
    I have a short dog and also I am aware enough of the world that I know this stuff can affect say, a mother with a stroller or someone in a wheelchair trying to navigate around it. So when I'd come across it I'd always move it onto the grass because I didn't really know where it was coming from. Eventually I'd see it get reported as litter on our local complaints app and the city would clean it up and that was that. Once or twice I took a garbage bag myself and threw out. This happened for years.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 05
    I had to make a Facebook account for a job I took, and idly decided to join my local neighbourhood Facebook group. Scrolling back to read the drama, I came across a complaint about that house.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 06
    Someone commented "try being their neighbour, it's like living by a dump." By scouring the comments I found out these kids just do this constantly, the parents don't care and have been talked to by the city and the neighbours, and the colour of the house of the culprits (confirming which house it was.) The kids just thought this was fun.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 07
    So I decided - why not just throw everything BACK IN? I began doing this in 2021. Shoe? In their yard. Gatorade bottle? Yard. Dog One time a whole Barbie was out there. I picked it up. Chucked it. bag? Yard.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 08
    See, the kids were never out when I was out. So no one really saw me throw it back in. One time we threw the same shoe back and forth six times. Six runs, I saw that glitter Velcro shoe. Six times, I tossed it back over their fence.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 09
    This whole thing baffled me because I can't imagine the parents understood where all their was going. I saw a whole raincoat, big toys, adult sneakers. Like, these children were taking stuff from the house to do this! It always slowed down in the winter but once the snow melted... it came back.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 10
    One day I went for my run and one of those plastic tricycles was there. Something in me snapped. I moved it to the side and left it there. I ignored it for a few days. Then, I went for a walk with my dog. And I heard the kids in the yard.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 11
    I picked that sucker up, stepped far back, and with all my might, whaled that into their yard. I heard a shriek and the sound of breaking, and then silence. Then I walked up to the fence, and said "I better not see any of your garbage on this sidewalk ever again."
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 12
    And then kept walking with my dog. Because really, what were the kids gonna do? The fence was higher than they were, it was not gated nor close to a walking path, so if they wanted to see me they'd have to go down six houses to come out to the path I was on. Their parents clearly didn't give a This was fall 2022.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 13
    I'm happy to report I haven't seen a single piece of garbage behind their house since. And yes, they still live there, their artwork is still proudly displayed in the windows.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 14
    Suspicious-Hat-636. A friend of mine learned a hard lesson as a child living in Ventura, California. Growing up with two dóbermans in the family, he was tasked with duty. For over a year he would pitch the turds over the back fence into the neighboring orchard. One fine day, he came home from school and was informed by his mother that there was a project that required his attention in the back yard. Apparently the farmer who owned the property was a disgruntled by the accumulation of feces and u
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 15
    PrideMelodic3625. Had this with my friends' entitled neighbors. Year after year their neighbors threw their grass cuttings over the fence onto my friends' field. Year after year my friends watched it pile up. Then when my friends started to build their forever home, in the field, they asked the ground workers to please put it all back where it came from.... perfect revenge. 605 Reply Share
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 16
    KatDevsGames Good. Someone needed to teach those screeching little hellions a lesson. Glad you were able to educate them a little bit about the real world. 504 Reply Share
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 17
    Babyl McGeezacks One time in New Orleans lower ninth ward I was doing property cleanup about a year post Hurricane Katrina. I was using a push bushhogging mower used for big thick brush. Was cleaning next to a property that was getting rebuilt. I was working in thick growth and it was hot and it started to stink as something fierce. Soon I realized I was mowing over countless bags of hot fresh human All the workers . from the construction site next door were in bags and tossing them in to the di
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 18
    SharkNecromancy. I had a neighbor in Colorado who kept throwing stuff over our shared fence, into my back yard to with my two dogs. She would wait unti 8 -9AM when we let them out in the mornings to open her back door, make alot of noise to get the dogs barking and then start recording it. After a couple letters from her "Your dogs are barking at 10 in the morning, this is unacceptable!" she started throwing broken glass, chicken and pork bones, nails, etc into the yard.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 19
    I cleaned that weeks, and one day I snapped because my wife took the dogs to the park, and I went out back to clean up the ladies' mess and she jumps out onto her back porch starts yelling and talking really loudly "SEE! This is the house with the dogs, I can get them to bark, watch!" and she's just throwing stuff at and against the fence. I grabbed up the dog can we had, and just dumped all the, nails, broken glass and everything back over the fence and told her to get [...]. up for
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 20
    She still complained about the barking, but didn't throw over the fence anymore. Her dogs got out one time and we just dropped them off at the local humane society, turns out we weren't the first people she did this to, and we weren't the first to drop her dogs off at the shelter, she ended up paying something like $800 to get her dogs back 342 Reply Share
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 21
    reggie3408 When I was a kid, maybe 8? My neighbor had a Halloween party and they took everyone's pumpkin on the street and smashed it in the road. I worked hard on my pumpkin. So a couple months later the cousins come to visit. I tell them. We go into the canyon with sticks and break off pieces of this big prickly pear cactus. Then launched them over the fence to the neighbors yard. Cactus on the roof, cactus in the pool, etc. Never heard anything about it. 288 Reply Share
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 22
    .. Wonder_Moon as a mom with a young one who goes on walks with a stroller, i am living vicariously through you with this lol. i love my neighborhood but there's always people chatting in the middle of the sidewalk which means i have to fanagle my way around them (sometimes my daughter is asleep in the stroller so it makes having to recline the stroller back a bit to smoothly go over the curb/driveway a sure fire way to wake her up) or lately, i just stop and stare. just today while walking with
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 23
    flitterbug33. We have a neighbor who put his non-bin (monthly county pickup) garbage across the road on our property. It's supposed to be big stuff like appliances and such but he did hvac work and he'd leave that and just household garbage there. This part of our property we don't mow, it's a wooded area. We didn't have a problem with it except 1. the county uses those big scoups to pick it up which leaves the area bumpy/little ditches and 2. What the county didn't pickup (paper, insulation, li
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 24
    Neighbor thought "right of way" meant he could do whatever. Husband finally had enough and told him if "right of way' meant he could put stuff on our property, then Husband could put our garbage on his 'right of way". Now neighbor puts his garbage on the other neighbors property. 106 Reply Share
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 25
    Purplepeal I used to work for a charity with urban nature reserves and we often dealt with this type of problem. One particular neighbour threw random rubbish over his back fence into our reserve. He had a little boy who could see us through the fence. I was stood by his pile of rubbish putting it into a bag and picked up a broken toy, tractor or truck type thing and the little boy said 'that's mine' Still wasn't anything we could do about it though.
    via u/monstersof-men
  • 26
    Even with an address in fly tipped waste the people had to admit to it as their address in it wasn't quite enough evidence to give them a fine, and the council is so underfunded that it doesn't have time or resources to follow everything up.
    via u/monstersof-men

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hoa neighbors petty-revenge-reddit snow neighborhood fence neighborhood-drama neighborhood-stories petty revenge petty reddit thread Reddit
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