She should have asked when the discussion at the town meeting would take place so she could record it and put it on youtube.
I call it the “cry threshold.” When a small child hurts themselves in a minor accident, they instantly look around to see how the adults react. If the adults ignore the child, the child simply moves on. If the adults make a scene (“Are you all right? Does it hurt? Are you ok?”) then the child starts crying. Overprotective parents cause this threshold to be extremely low, and children soon learn that they can get attention and gifts by crying, in effect, controlling the behavior of adults. Children who are neglected have a very high threshold, as they realize that they have to help themselves, and crying is a waste of time.
True, though I would argue that having to high a threshold can be a bad thing, too. Keeping all your emotions bottled up inside isn’t healthy, either.
@bobkitty: did they try and involve the police, like the woman in the OP? It would be funny that they wouldn’t realize that their trespassing would be more likely to get them in trouble.
My wife’s half sister is a nice person, but she’s terrible with the cry threshold. One time we were watching a little relative girl play at a family reunion and the girl fell on her butt abruptly – no big deal, just a sit-down. The girl seemed surprised but did not cry out, then she looked over at the adults.
This woman leaped up and ran to the toddler in alarm, yelling, “Where’s your mother? WHERE’S YOUR MOTHER? OH MY GOD, WHERE DID SHE GO???” and swiveling her head around frantically.
I have no kids and don’t spend a lot of time with them, but even I knew this was a hideous mistake.
Screaming and bawling for 30 minutes ensued.
Ah, yes. You must live in my town or close to it. They move to the “country” because they want a “simpler life” with all the pretty rural surroundings and isn’t it oh so peaceful here where we can buy a big house for less and still look rich (although that concept’s disappearing quickly enough).
And then they want to change everything to suit their needs, and make it the way they had it in their former more suburban life. Why don’t we have city trash service? What’s a well? A septic system? What do you do with that? Why don’t the schools have every new-fangled gadget readily available? And the goats have sex? Right out in the open field where they’ve lived forever and ever? We need new by-laws and changes and gadgets and “no fucking” signs for the goats! Aren’t you people disgusted by all this rural-ness?
If you don’t want to see goats fuck, then don’t drive by a farm with goats. Go home. To suburbia and leave those of us alone who are quite happy with the way things are and have been - the very reasons you moved here and now want to change.
Don’t get me started (or is it too late?)
Since I moved to this town just over a week ago, I have had no fewer than 10 people bitch to me about the deer.
Seriously now, the only thing resembling a city is a minimum of 20 minutes away. Do you expect there to NOT be deer here? I’m thrilled at the fact that I’ve seen 5 of them since the move. I really don’t care if they eat the rhododendron in my yard. If you don’t like the deer, move to Worcester. I lived there for 19 years and never saw any deer.
As for goats, there’s someone on the way to the highway who has a lot of goats. The other day, my boyfriend and I were driving past at 6am and he abruptly started laughing. Apparently one of the goats had gotten loose and was walking up to the front door. He said the goat was cold and wanted to have breakfast in the house.
I call dibbs on the rock band name “goat pimps”.
1> “Stop watching my goats, you pervert!” (hang up)
2> “So… how was their technique?”
3> “Of course. Those are Siamese Fucking Goats. What did you expect?”
4> “Was he bigger than you/your husband?”
That’s like the people who call animal control or go up to someone’s house because the horses look dead except for the occasional swish of the tail (oh, and the fact that they are still breathing). Haven’t people seen dogs and cats napping?
Let me tell you, a horse that is stretched out flat like a corpse in the midday sun is a happy horse. Of course, if they’re moaning in pain or thrashing, there’s something wrong, but horses like to lie down if they feel safe. If you go out and disturb them, they usually lift their heads up and glare at you before putting their heads back in the grass and heaving an exhausted sigh. They’re thinking, “What does that biddy want now? Can’t she see I’m getting my beauty sleep?”
There are also people who don’t realize that not all horses/dogs/cats can have food in front of them 24/7 without blowing up like balloons.
Congodwarf, one of my friend’s ponies (who was waaay too smart for his own good) did get out of the pasture, wander in to the kitchen of the house on the property (it was a nice day and the door was open for ventilation) and eat the bacon that was sitting on the stove.
Chimera: how about this one?
5. It’s about time. I told them I’d better have a grandkid (heh) by next Christmas.
The more I think of this the more I would insist that the caller use 911 when reporting the incident. The recording would live on the internet until the end of time. If you could just prime the call center ahead of time so they answer with: “when 2 goats love each other they often express it in certain ways”.
Don’t forget trying to stop farmers from working after dark (running their noisy machinery), or manuring their fields (and making a smell). (I’m surprised no one’s mentioned complaints about livestock smells; these must be well-tended critters. Then again, no one’s mentioned keeping pigs yet.) Don’t forget the people who love living near wild woods until hunting season starts and pickups appear with the late Bambi for cargo. Or the people (in cities too) who love the organic produce at the local farm market, until a caterpillar crawls out of the strawberry box.
My mother told me a tale once of a farmer who had the local Humane Society sic’d on him by a new neighbor convinced the farmer was abusing his cows, because their udders looked so swollen. The Humane Society people determined that the cows in question had recently calved, then went to explain the facts of life to the neighbor. I don’t know if they had any luck with that.
These are the same people who call police and complain that the horses have been blindfolded. Um…no. I actually have a friend who had police come to her house, all huffy and puffy, and she was at a loss to figure out what on Earth the complaint was. Then she realized it was her horses’ fly masks. Awesome.
It is the #1 question I get asked by nonhorsey folkd about my mare or the other horses on the property: “Why are they blindfolded?” or “Is that for training?” or “Are they being punished?”
Nope. Fly masks are a simple screen mesh. I cheerfully explain that it’s like looking through a screen door close up; you don’t notice the mesh pattern and can see through it just fine. Ditto my mare (note how she finds her food just fine and isn’t running into the fences). It’s far better than those flies laying eggs in the corners of her eyes…ick.
I wanna see her go to the police with this one.
“I want to report my neighbor’s goats. They’re Siamese Fucking Goats.”
“Um, what?”
“You heard me, she said they were Siamese Fucking Goats, and they were having sex.”
“I see.”
Meh … my jackass neighbors in the blue house to the right complained to the local magistrate that our lawn was unmowed. The lawn in question is about 60 feet by 15 feet [between the house and the road] and is less than 5% of the total property. We live in a light industrial [ie farming zone] So I explained to the magistrate about what a tiny percentage of the property the lawn actually is, and that it was a farm zone. It is not ‘in town’ at all. The magistrate agreed that there was absolutely no impact to rodent control by mowing such a small area when the balance of my property is woods and pasturage. So when mrAru got home from sea, I had him fence in the front yard so I could put the sheep there.
The jackass had a holy shit fit, standing on my front porch screaming at me about sheep in the front yard, looking like petticoat junction hillbilly hicks and making him look like a hick 
and bringing down property values. he then tried to get the magistrate involved again and was told to suck it up, we lived in a farm zone.
By the way, this jackass grooms roughly 7 acres of lawn and woods. There is no undergrowth in his woods, it is all mulched with redwood [looking] chips. No shit, he gets a yard crew out there weekly. I would be willing to bet he lays out what we pay a month in mortgage for lawn service. Didn’t stop me from roundup-ing fuck you asshole in it in huge letters after he poisoned my dog. :mad:
Not quite Lake Wobegone, but charming nonetheless.
As we tell our neighbors: “If you don’t want to see animals (and possibly people) having sex, stay out of our woods”.
Until our dog Bear passed away at the ripe old age of 15 last year, we had a neighbor who haunted us and animal control about him many times. She placed calls to them asking not to be named and then called me as late as 11:30 pm refusing to give her name but more than willing to give vague threats. Of course, her name was right there on caller ID but she apparently didn’t have a good grasp of technology. Her complaint was that NO dog should be left outside when it was cold let alone with snow on the ground. Bear had the mother of all dog houses that I built for him but usually refused to use it unless freezing rain was pelting down. Animal control had to come by three times to assess the situation and found nothing of course and apologized and told her each time to stop calling but she still did it again anyway. That was one spoiled dog.
One relevant point was that Bear was an oversized Samoyed - A SIBERIAN SLED DOG. They hate heat, love cold and snow, and were developed in conditions much more harsh than you would ever see in suburban Boston. He hated being inside during the winter and he pined for the Siberian tundra. Dumb bitch. Some older women just go off the realism rails sometimes. I think there should be a special prison for them.
This. SOOO this.
I’d forgotten about that one.:smack:
Our dearly departed husky was the same, she slept on her doghouse or in a snowbank all winter, and in the summer in a tunnel she dug under the doghouse :smack: She had one of the permanent attached to a hose pet water things and a huge self feeder bin that held 50 pounds of chow, whatever she caught in the yard trying to sneak her food and any miscellaneous leftovers we thought she would like. And it isn’t like she couldnt get into the house, we had a doggie door in the back door so my inside dog and cats could get in and out.