Entitlement is such a crazy concept. Now that may not make much sense, but bear with me a moment.
Just imagine the thought processes of someone who does something genuinely bad and when confronted with it, they just double down, and somehow manage to spin it so it’s actually YOUR fault.
How do you even lack self awareness that badly?
Well, today we’ll be talking about an entire family who decided to have a nice picnic, with their two kids and dog… on someone else’s front lawn. Yeah.
More info: Reddit
What would you do if you came home and found a whole picnic in your front yard?
Image credits: Erik (HASH) Hersman
The poster came to vent about the entitled parents she dealt with when she came home and saw people in her front yard
Image credits: SpookyGirl0123
Image credits: nvainio (not the actual photo)
These people were a family of 4 with a dog and they were having a picnic on her lawn, not intending to leave whatsoever
Image credits: SpookyGirl0123
The poster encouraged them to get out by turning on the sprinklers and turning over her camera footage to the police a while later
Reddit user SpookyGirl0123 came home on a weekend, from the grocery store, only to find a whole family plopped down on her front lawn. Including their dog!
She tried talking to them, and they were completely unaware they were doing something weird or wrong. And when the poster insisted they were on private property and should leave, the mom of the family had some choice words.
Enraged, the homeowner went ahead and just turned on her sprinkler system, which drove them away, thankfully, but not without letting some more obscenities and threats fly.
The cherry on top of this story is that OP showed her security camera footage to her policeman neighbor, who charged the adults with trespassing.
All’s well that ends well.
According to the comments, SpookyGirl0123 has a really nice yard, with the neighbors even joking that they’d like to play golf on her lawn, so I get appreciating a nice yard, but having a picnic on it is just too much.
To hear another way to deal with annoying trespassers, Bored Panda reached out to one of the commenters on the original post. They go by the name of VenusSmurf, and in their comment, they shared how difficult it was dealing with constant incidents on a beachfront house before they got a guard dog.
They couldn’t legally put up a fence on the beach side, so thieves, vandals, and generally unpleasant people were a common encounter in the VenusSmurf household and the entire neighborhood.
Before they got a dog, theft was the biggest problem for Venus.
“Anything left outside is usually gone within an hour, though having a pair of men drive their vehicle into my yard and load the grill into their truck was probably the most blatant,” Venus writes, saying that the men didn’t even care that they were home with the front door wide open.
Besides these random thefts, there were times pre-dog when thieves would actually try to break in, attempting to smash a sliding glass door and shattering windows.
Image credits: camdruil (not the actual photo)
Luckily they failed on that account, because VenusSmurf had recently bought the house and boarded up the windows before they could get them repaired. Also, they only failed to smash the glass door because they were incompetent, Venus says, but at the same time it’s far more sinister than a couple of dudes trying to make off with a junk grill.
Turns out, people would still attempt to get in after Venus got the dog. “I still had people entering the property even after I got the dog, but if asking people to leave didn't work, I'd just let the dog into a fenced part of the yard, and the barking always did the trick.”
They were wise, though, and didn’t want to risk either the dog’s safety or suffering a lawsuit, and thus the pupper would be contained, but the offenders didn’t know that fact.
More importantly, over the years, thieves would hit homes in the beachfront neighborhood, walking into yards, opening unlocked doors, and just helping themselves to electronics or even cars.
As a testament to the dog’s protection, Venus’ house was never hit. They even have security footage of individuals or even small groups entering their yard, hearing the dog, and doing an immediate heel-turn. The dog isn’t their only defense, but they do agree that it’s the first and perhaps even best.
And we also asked about their pup, so here it is, straight from the commenter’s lips (or keyboard, in this case): “The dog is a very large and very grumpy Rhodesian Ridgeback. She spends 80% of her day snoring, she lets the children climb all over her and is more protective of them than even I am, but any stranger entering my property is going to have a bad time.”
So if you’re feeling somewhat unsafe in your home, a protective dog could do the trick, especially if they’ve got a big bark!
People who get annoyed at passersby get a bad rap for being ‘mean’ and ‘old’, but I think the annoying feeling when someone’s messing with your property is understandable. Especially if you work really hard on your lawn or other yard plants. Notwithstanding the fact that plain fields of green turf are pretty bad for the environment, needing lots of water to upkeep and having no plants for pollinators and other insects to live on.
Image credits: Robbie Sproule (not the actual photo)
There are various kinds of trespassing, though, according to iPleaders. There’s trespassing against people and property. For example, battery is considered as a form of trespassing against a person.
On the other hand, there’s the well-known trespass against private property or goods, the latter of which means interfering with or taking someone’s items.
FindLaw describes trespassing as “the legal term for the situation in which one person enters onto the land of another without permission or the legal right to be there.”
They also go on to mention that it’s possible for trespassers to file injury claims against the property owners if there was an intentionally created or maintained unsafe condition, if the owner didn’t warn the trespassers about it, or if it could cause serious injury or worse.
So just one more reason to keep people off your property, even if you haven’t set bear traps on your turf, as you may be liable if they get injured while in your yard.
But what can you do about people traipsing all over your property? The laws vary widely, depending on the country and even state you live in. If you’re really having problems, a good preventative measure may be signs that the territory is private or even a fence if you can afford it, as even a short one would likely deter would-be steppers.
When a fence isn’t available, perhaps a hedge or thorny plants would do the trick, if you’ve got the patience for them to grow to an adequate size. Cameras could be a good deterrent too. Alternatively, a loyal guard dog will do, as we've already heard.
The optimal solution is to simply ask the person to leave your property. That failing, you could call the police, who could forcibly remove the offender, rather than doing it yourself. You could do it yourself, but it’s ill-advised, as the legality of using reasonable force varies widely.
So, stay safe, yell at kids on your lawn, but don’t go overboard!
The post got 3.4k upvotes and 122 comments. People cheered the poster on, saying that she did good to “help the family cool off,” with many being aghast at the family’s entitlement.
Share your comments below!
The community enjoyed how the poster dealt with the rude family, including the fact that the police handed out a trespassing charge to the adults
