The Nuisance Next Door -- Local Readers Offer Their Own Versions Of `Neighbors From Hell'

When we asked you to tell us about your "neighbors from hell," we didn't anticipate the need for a communitywide therapy session.

But believe us, dozens and dozens of you had years of pent-up frustration, anger and sometimes sorrow to share.

Some of you suggested solutions like getting to know your neighbors better or contacting the landlord if there are bad renters. But many of you are at wits' end after trying everything you can think of to resolve your problems.

We offer the accompanying list of community resources to help those of you in situations that will never be resolved with a plate of cookies or a handshake.

Here are excerpts from some of your stories. (Names have been removed for both privacy and personal safety reasons.)

We have a family who's never been friendly toward the neighborhood. But that was OK as long as they kept to themselves and everyone did likewise. Last summer they let a relative move in - well, sort of move in.

First he slept on the ground in the back yard. Then he lived in a tent. When winter came they put an old trailer out back that he and his girlfriend live in. The drinking and noise level have really increased. A couple of weeks ago on a week night he decided to fix his go-cart - at 2 a.m. He would crank this thing up and run around the neighborhood. He did this until around 4 a.m.

Last Saturday, after drinking all day, he waited until 1 a.m. then came to the end of their driveway and started yelling at the top of his lungs. Something about a truck. He yelled and yelled and used every four, five and six-letter swear word he has learned since puberty, a condition he will never reach.

After yelling for a good 40 minutes, he finally staggered around and fell in the ditch. Then he crawled to the side of the ditch and went yelling and screaming on down the street. Finally someone called the police and they picked him up a couple of blocks away . . .

We're talking crazed, drunk people from hell. . . . The only recourse we have is to call the police. We're even afraid to do that because of retaliation.

Following is a letter I composed and sent on behalf of several angry neighbors. The owners have done NOTHING! If you've never heard a Guinea hen scream at 5 a.m., well, you just don't know how to start your day off right. One neighbor's dog did attack and kill one of them last year. The birds were in the dog's own yard. The owners of the hen had an absolute stroke - insisted that they pay ($100) . . . Help. There must be some animal association we can complain to and resolve this:

Dear Neighbor,

We are writing you this letter in regards to your Guinea hens. It was bad enough when there were only two of them, but now with countless little ones - IT'S REALLY TOO MUCH. They are in our yards, cackling before the sun comes up. Eating our gardens and crapping all over everything. Those of us who have pets don't allow ours to run free every day to disrupt your yard, sleep and lifestyle and we would expect the same common courtesy!

Although we don't understand it, we feel sure that you have concern for these beasts. That being the case, keep them under YOUR wing and in YOUR OWN YARD!

On several occasions, many of us have protected them from attacks by our own pets. This will soon come to a cackling halt. A bird in OUR hands will be ONES IN OUR DISH.

We have a very nice recreational beach home. What for over 20 years has been a nice getaway, has turned into a nightmare. The owners of the house next door moved four years ago and rented the house out. . . . They don't care a hoot about who lives in the house, as long as they pay the rent.

The (current) renters are members of a notorious motorcycle gang. We are becoming increasingly fearful of our personal safety, and the safety of our property. The use of loud profanity by the renters and their friends is commonplace. Sometimes the wife even directs it at us, when she feels it is time to tell us where to go. Motorcycles gather routinely at their house on Sunday afternoon. Riders openly urinate in the back yard for our benefit. After spending 20 to 30 minutes in the house lightening their spirits, they roar out of the driveway, sometimes flipping us the bird and then they roar down the quiet country road at 60 miles an hour.

We are at the point of considering the sale of our lovely place, but now we realize that the obvious presence of the bikers next door has severely impacted the market price of the house. What a dilemma. And the bikers find it a near perfect place because we are the only ones who witness their activities.

After years of saving we purchased our first home. Most of our neighbors were great. The exception to the rule was next door.

Their yard was filled with trash, broken-down cars and blackberry bushes. Their free-roaming attack dogs had a grip of terror on the block.

The parents were a nightmare. We couldn't open our windows without the mom's substance abuse drifting in and hanging over the living room in a thick cloud. The dad began to drink on Friday afternoon, and beat his family until Monday morning.

The 12-year-old was a criminal. The 8-year-old boy was sent to our house three times a day to "borrow" things. I'm using that term loosely, because hundreds of dollars' worth of merchandise left, nothing ever came back. The 3-year-old boy spent his time climbing onto their roof, or smashing toys he had stolen from our kids. He was usually naked and smelling of urine, but always unsupervised.

Any attempts at talking with them met with threats. The kids wouldn't talk, either. They lived in hell and we were right next door . . .

The last straw was when their 8-year-old boy threatened to rape, then shoot, my 8-year-old daughter because she told him to stop throwing rocks at our dog.

All of our neighbors were finished taking it also. We ganged up on them! Letters were written, calls were made. Garbage they dumped in our yard was dumped back in theirs. I slept by an open window so I could listen for problems. Nothing was "borrowed" ever again. We watched every car that drove up or left.

At first it didn't seem to be working. The animal-control truck would come, but the dogs were gone. The police would come, but it would be after the parents covered their tracks.

Eventually it started to change. They had to clean up their act. Public health cars made regular visits. The youngest boy went to Childhaven for a while, and eventually was taken from them. The other boys started taking off on their bikes into the night. Their drunken father would chase them down the street. He was greeted by several neighbors coming out to make sure the boys got away. The dogs and cars left, too. In the end they moved to a different house.

We moved, too. Our new next-door neighbor's yard is filled with 10-foot-high blackberry bushes. He sends his dog to our yard for his daily dump. He also refuses to acknowledge our existence.

But after having Christmas guests arrive while two women are fist fighting in the yard next door, or trying to talk to a 911 dispatcher while listening to a child plead for mercy from his drunken father, I think my new neighbor is a good neighbor. I no longer judge a good neighbor by well-trimmed grass or pleasant conversation.

My "Neighbor from hell" story involves an annoying barking dog that started the day the neighbors brought it home as a puppy. . . . After a few weeks, it got less and less attention and more and more vocal. Never let in the house, it would whine and whimper continuously until someone came outside or fed it.

Then it learned to bark. We would sit outside on our deck to enjoy the evening or a Saturday afternoon, and all we would hear was continuous barking and yelping, literally for hours. . . . The final straw came when we had logged more than 50 incidents, about 20 phone calls, four letters, and one letter from our attorney threatening a lawsuit.

We were ready to put our house up for sale. One morning, after another sleepless night, my husband said he had an idea. . . . He called Mrs. Smith (not her real name) and poured on the guilt about what a wonderful dog they had, how it needed attention, what a problem it must be to take care of it, and played on her distaste for having it in the house.

Then he told her we wanted the dog! . . . He told her we would give it a good home or be certain to find one for it. He even said we would buy it from her . . .

Imagine our surprise when she agreed to $50! All this time and wasted anger for a mere $50! . . . Well, we were at her doorstep in 30 seconds to pick up that flea bag and probably broke several laws getting it to the Humane Society.

When I was about 13 or 14 years old, growing up in Bothell, our family dogs would bark incessantly for hours at night disrupting neighbors, but not my parents who were sound sleepers. This all changed one morning at 3:30 a.m. when the phone rang, waking dad from a deep slumber. Furious that anyone would call at such an hour, he picks up the receiver, only to hear . . . ruff . . . ruff . . . ruff . . . ruff!

A drug-dealing mother-and-son combo moved into a house in the cul-de-sac across the street. Within days, we had a steady stream of rowdy, vulgar customers circling the block at 2 to 3 a.m. in their muscle cars, littering liquor cans and bottles around our hedge and interrupting my sleep on almost a nightly basis.

An officer from the north precinct advised me to go outside and "take down some license numbers" of these potential crack-heads. "Sure," I responded, "I'll go down an unlit cul-de-sac at 3 in the morning with my flashlight, if you'll promise to come visit me at the hospital!"

Ultimately, the "law of the streets" prevailed. The son apparently cheated some of his customers, and one early morning about 15 of them showed up with sticks and baseball bats (no guns, thank God), and trashed the place. The mother and son apparently escaped out a back door or window, and that was the last I ever saw of them.

First, I should tell you that I grew up in a Midwestern suburb where our neighbors were like family. I can remember never even knocking on the door to go into a neighbor's house. My family still exchanges Christmas cards with neighbors that we had 30 years ago.

The first clue I had that we might have a bad neighbor was when they moved in next door. My wife and I went over to introduce ourselves with a basket of goodies, including some information about our community. Mr. Jones (not their real name) didn't bother to stop what he was doing and say hello, and Mrs. Jones said "It's going to be so nice to live in the country." The country? The houses are 10 feet apart and it's only a short ride in the Mercedes to the big city . . .

Because we unfortunately share a one-lane access easement, there have been problems whenever we have visitors. Once we had a garage sale and the Joneses proceeded to go around the neighborhood and take down the garage sale signs that we had put up to apparently avoid the "traffic" on the easement. And if anyone parks near or on the access easement, even a pizza delivery car, the cops will be called. . . . Unfortunately, the stories can go on and on.

About 4:30 one Sunday morning I hear this loud banging. I wake up and look out my window to see my neighbor is making the noise. After

30 minutes I get tired of hearing this, so I go over to his house and ask him to stop. Let me draw you the picture. He is on his roof at 5 a.m. with his wife's living room lamp and two friends trying to reroof his house.

So I ask, "Is there some big storm I should know about?

Neighbor: "Yeah, a real big one."

Me: "It's 5 a.m., could you wait until the sun comes up at least?"

Neighbor: "No. My buddy here needs to be at work by 8 this morning."

It left me with little choice but to ask the police to ask him. Funny, he would not talk to me for a month.

Short of moving on, none of you offered solutions for the all-too-common problems of fence and driveway disputes, or for effectively coping with neighbors who drink in excess and/or collect junker cars. But here are some suggestions from readers who think their problems are solved.

-- One man who bought a home on a dead-end street found he had moved near a house with lots of traffic going in and out after dark. Suspecting a drug operation, he sent a postcard - without return address - saying the house was being monitored by video. About three days later a moving van pulled up and the problem neighbors moved out.

-- One reader bought her neighbors a silent sprinkler because the noisy one they left on 24 hours a day disturbed her.

-- And then there is the apartment dweller who lives next door to a bunch of roosters that start crowing at dawn or whenever an ambulance or other vehicle with a siren goes by. The tenants say they are just joking, but the only solution they've come up with so far is to throw a couple of weasels over the fence.

-- Our next reader had problems with barking dogs and dogs dumping in his yard - until he started firing a BB gun. "It got to the point where all I had to do was rattle a box of BBs and the dog would take off," he said of the dumpster. Most recently he's found that the barking dog that wakes him up in the middle of the night doesn't like to be sprayed with ammonia.

-- Another reader called the house where an offending barking dog lived at 2 a.m. and said, "Hey, your dog's barking." Two to three days later, after repeated middle-of-the-night calls, the dog quit barking.

Misbehaving dogs were among the top complaints. One couple asked, "How would you like to have neighbors who keep two barking Rottweilers in a kennel under your bedroom window?" Neither did they. First they tried politely asking the neighbors to move the kennel. They didn't. So they rigged up a hose so they could spray the dogs. Finally, after the dogs got out and chased a child, they starting shooting them with a pellet gun. The dog part of the problem apparently has been solved.

And, finally, here's a letter from a "good neighbor" with a question for the neighborhood: We have helped you move in and helped you move out, we've collected your mail and newspapers and tended your gardens while you've been on vacation. We've given you plant starts, lent you gardening equipment and arranged bouquets of cut flowers to ease the accompanying grief of illness and death. We've helped you find employment and needed community resources as well as helping you find your lost pets.

We maintain our property and experience great joy at sharing the beauty of a rainbow of summer flowers with those who pass by. We've done our level best to honor both your property and your privacy rights. We've agreed to problem-solving discussions of neighborhood situations and have declined repeated invitations to join the destructiveness of the "gossip gang" peddling slander door to door. . . .

By declining your invitation to join the "gossip gang" we have apparently become the target of that gossip and its resultant actions: poisoning of our trees and shrubs, harassing us verbally and nonverbally, blocking access to and from our property, poisoning the perceptions of new neighbors, vandalizing our property.

We continue to try to be the kind of neighbors we would like to share community with. Since, by your actions, you have told us that we are "neighbors from hell," please answer this question: Who are your perfect neighbors? What, specifically, constitutes good neighbors?