When bad neighbors get worse

The other day, I posted about a local story in nearby Trenton, Michigan, about the neighbor from hell. Interestingly, my significant other and I had a continuing problem with our next door neighbors, but it was in no way as bad as the Trenton story… but it is perhaps illustrative of some of the problems of modern living, so I will post it anyway.

Short version: My partner likes a semi-wild looking garden with lots of native plants, vines, etc. I consider grass just a place for the dog to poop and have no lawn pride whatsoever, mowing only when absolutely necessary. The folks next door like their plants in neatly ordered rows and sorted by color… they are retired and the husband of the couple spends many hours every week manicuring and fertilizing his lawn.

Five or so years ago my partner had a native plant called “pokeberry” growing in the yard (on our side of the property line) which was one of her favorites. It grows fairly tall and has reddish colored stems; late in the year it puts out grapelike clusters of juicy purple berries that the birds love to eat (see pic at right). Apparently, the birds scattered some of the berries on the neighbor’s driveway and, after they stepped in the mess, some of the purple juice got onto the carpets inside their home.

One afternoon, my partner was out in her garden in late summer and noticed that all the pokeberry was wilting. She looked closer and saw that it appeared that someone had used scissors or a knife to cut off the berry clusters. Eventually, she found out that the neighbors had snuck over at night and poisoned her pokeberries because they were angry about the damage to their carpets (although why it should be our responsibility to check their shoes for berries before they walk on their own carpet is not clear to me). We were not happy about it, but they apologized and we decided to try to forget about it.

Each year, however, a similar event would occur. Other plants mysteriously died or were uprooted. The neighbors put in a fence but left scraps of lumber and concrete rubble in our yard until Annie reminded him that he had left all the refuse in our yard. Some of Annie’s flowers would ‘poke thru’ the pickets of their fence and this irritated them so they sprayed round-up through the fence and killed a foot wide swath of plants along the edge of our yard. I don’t dispute their right to clip or cut any plant that grows or hangs over the border, but once they started defoliating on our side of the fence I began to get very irritated.

The arguments grew less and less rational, but the neighbors seemed to follow a yearly policy of “poison plants in spring/summer, apologize later” almost like clockwork for about 4 years. Annie stopped gardening (an activity she loved) because she just felt uncomfortable about the folks next door looking daggers at her whenever she was out there.

The weird thing is that these people didn’t seem to want to leave us alone. Throughout our period of conflict, they always seemed to want to say, “Hello” and “Good Morning” and “Nice weather we are having!” even though they might have been sneaking across the property line the week before to poison Annie’s plants. Annie noticed that the more she pointedly ignored the neighbors’ greetings, the fewer incidences of poisoning/plant uprooting/etc., occurred. They didn’t stop entirely, but if we were nice to them during the daytime, it seemed as if they felt more comfortable doing whatever “covert garden control” they felt was appropriate on our side of the property line. Perversely, being nice and forgiving seemed to just encourage them in their bad behavior. We finally began to ignore them entirely.

After one poisoning too many, she called the local police and asked what to do. The officer was sympathetic, but said that unless we caught the neighbor in our yard, there was little he could do. He suggested we file a claim against them in small claims court.

We filed, went to court and both sides told our story. We showed photos of the dead and dying plants, photos of the ‘dead zone’ along the fence and a note from the neighbors that said, “I am sorry we poisoned your plants.” They showed photos of flowers poking through the slats of the picket fence and photos of our yard and admitted that they had done at least some of the poisoning, but they did it because our garden was “ugly.” The judge found in our favor and awarded us $350.00. Compared to the heartache and the aggravation of dealing with these people for 4+ years, the money seemed like a pittance, but it had a satisfying effect on the evil neighbors. The husband lined their picket fence with some sort of clear plastic panel to keep our plants from poking through the slats instead of continuing to spray herbicide.

I guess I feel like there are a lot of potential messages in my little story. One of them is to perhaps not underestimate the power of the craziness of some people. The fact that being rude to them (i.e.: pointedly not acknowledging their greetings) actually seemed to encourage them to behave seemed counter intuitive to me at the time. I wanted to believe that there is something good in most people and most problems can be worked out if people try to understand each other’s point of view and work out a mutually satisfying solution. I would have surmised that if my neighbor was doing me wrong, it would actually be a good strategy to be nice to him since that might make him feel bad about what he was doing. But my partner’s strategy (along with the lawsuit) were the only things that worked. “Forgive and forget” seems to have convinced the neighbors that the poisoning and garden vandalism was OK and they could do it again and again and get away with it. Rudely ignoring their greetings and dragging them to small claims court (which was a big pain in the ass and a huge karma suck, so I recommend it as a solution of last resort) were the only things that did work.

I don’t like what this story says about the nature of human beings.

Crazy, crazy, crazy in Trenton, Michigan

I was interested to learn that in the nearby Trenton, Michigan, we have a textbook perfect case of chaotic crazy.

Three years ago, Jennifer Petrov wanted to have her children invited to the birthday party of Kathleen Edwards (a young girl who lives right across the street). Petrov sent a text message to Kathleen’s stepmother requesting an invitation, but the message was not returned in time to attend (I wonder why she would text and then wait for a time sensitive response from someone across the street when she could have walked over and knocked on the door, but that remains unanswered). Petrov took umbrage at the lack of an invite and at some point began to taunt the family and child who had failed to extend an invitation.

The seven year old, Kathleen Edwards, has Huntington’s disease. Both her biological mother and her grandfather died of Huntington’s. I don’t know much about Huntington’s other than the patients suffer increasing pain and gradual loss of motor control and there is no cure. Diagnosis with Huntington’s is a death sentence. Kathleen Edwards’ father has publicly stated that he does not want anything from the Petrovs other than to be left alone.

Among other insults, Petrov posted a picture on her Facebook page in which she had superimposed the face of Kathleen Edwards on a skull and crossbones. Petrov also posted a picture of Kathleen’s deceased mother being embraced by the grim reaper. The taunts included, “I’ll be glad when you are dead!” Her husband built a coffin of plywood and affixed it to their pickup truck. Neighbors said the Petrovs would stop the truck in front of the Edwards house and gun the engine to draw attention to the vehicle, but the Petrovs subsequently claimed the truck was just an expression of their interest in television shows like “Sons of Anarchy” and not intended to be offensive.

The Edwards took out “Personal Protection Orders” with the Trenton Police against the Petrovs which prevent the Petrovs from speaking to or contacting the Edwards.

One of the local news channels went to the scene of this trainwreck and asked Jennifer Petrov why she was taunting this 7 year old girl. “Personal satisfaction,” she said. “Because it rubs their a—s raw. Burns their a—s.” She said all this in front of reporters with at least one video camera and, of course, this being ‘journalistic gold,’ the clip of Mrs. Petrov’s less than charitable rationalization of her crusade against a seven year old girl and her family ended up on the evening news and the web.

The story and video went viral. The condemnations, threats and insults against the Petrovs have poured in from around the globe. Her husband was suspended from his job. People threw eggs at the Petrov’s house.

At some point, however, the community’s overwhelmingly negative reaction seems to have forced Jennifer Petrov to feel compelled to issue an apology of sorts (see above link). The ‘apology’ came in the form of a statement saying that she was sorry if her statements and actions hurt anyone’s feelings, thus implying (tangentially) that the problem lay with the Edwards’ oversensitivity rather than with Mrs. Petrov’s public relishing of the girl’s impending demise. This is just idle speculation on my part, but I wonder if Kathleen’s stepmother decided to NOT respond to the text message in question three years ago because she didn’t want to deal with having the Petrovs (or at least their mother) in her house. It is not inconceivable to me that Mrs. Petrov was mean spirited or irascible before the invitation incident and that might have encouraged the stepmother to ignore the text in order to avoid having her at the party.

Aside from it’s tabloid value, I find myself wondering if this sort of story is a “sign of the times” or have people always been capable of being this crazy? Clearly, Jennifer Petrov relished stoking the conflict (at least until it began to backfire, resulting in her husband getting laid off, etc). And there are some truly horrible people in history, but historical evil, at least in my view, seems to be coupled with ambition. The Adolf Hitlers of the world seem to do what they do to create empires or write their names in history. Setting up a Facebook page to taunt the family of someone dying of Huntington’s seems so pathetic and pointless in comparison. Hopefully no one sees my statement as an attempt to rationalize Hitler’s evil by saying, “Well, at least Hitler had ambition!” But I just can’t understand why Jennifer Petrov had become so invested in attempting to harass the Edwards family and their daughter. Perhaps historical evil is easier for me to understand because it is often framed in the context of ambition and empire. But harassing your neighbors because they didn’t invite you to a birthday party? What kind of sick shit is that?