Someone pointed out to me that sometimes you just gotta ask - don't assume the person knows that a) it's a problem or b) that you are willing to help.

On another note, I just put a letter in a neighbor's mailbox asking them to stop feeding the deer. His actions over the last 5-10 years has caused the herd to grow and now landscape damage is far worse than it was before. Also his immediate neighbor has rats, something the exterminator attributes to the excess of corn on the ground next door. He is now deploying poison traps.

It finally occurred to me that perhaps the corn-feeding neighbor doesn't realize that his actions affect his neighbors' ability to have nice yards as our plants are being munched on a regular basis plus causing property damage by attracting rats.

We'll see what he says.

If he needed his wife's income to afford the house - maybe he's losing the house and figures, why bother?

That would be my guess.

I bet that can be a pretty depressing situation for the fella to be in. Who knows the particulars and what was or was not his fault but courts are not always friendly towards fellas so he probably is depressed.

I bet you do have a bit more wildlife but unless your area is somekind of polluted golf course type layout then not much. For example, across the street from me there are probably forty acres of land which has not been farmed since WWII so it is pretty natural. Behind me is mostly yards broken uo by random tree lines of which I have a little thicket.

Sure if one of my neighbors let his land go natural I would get a few more somethings but I wouldn't expect it to be terrible since the somethings are across the street alreadg.

Are you sure the house is still lived in? In our area, an abandon house may sit un-inhabited for 3 to 6 months, before the bank can do anything about it.

In a similar situation, I started mowing the front yard. I was not concerned about the rodents, which which would disappear as soon as the yard was maintained, but my concern was the ticks.

The house had sat empty for about through the winter. We heard the bank had taken over the house and had auctioning it off.

In the spring no one was doing anything about the yard, and the grass was about 8 inches tall. I decided to take matters into my own hand. I cut the side yard that adjoined my property and the front yard.

I got caught, by who I first thought was the new owner, but who turned out to be the man from the bank who monitors the house to ascertain if they were truly abandon,or the people just stop paying the mortgage. After the bank guy stopped and talked to me, the bank moved ahead on the foreclosure, and a short while later bank started to maintain the yard.

You should see my neighbor's back and side yard, it looks like a jungle! He mows the front yard but that's it. To make it worse, my house sits farther back from the road than his, so when I look out my living room window I see that mess. And yes, I do see rat snakes slithering out of there from time to time, I just hope I never see a rattlesnake. I have taken my electric sprayer and sprayed RoundUp about 15' over the property line before. ;)

At least in New York you only have non- venomous snakes, besides Copperheads and possible eastern rattlers. The rattlers may not go that far north, and they have only certain habitats in Pa- caves likely. So if you only have Copperheads, that makes it less dangerous. Those are the usual venomous snakes that do harm in Pa. And if you get unlucky enough to get envenomated by a Copperhead, getting to a hospital fairly soon will make it okay. They are venomous, but with treatment fairly soon, most victims are okay. It is the least of the evils, in other words. An eastern rattler is the worst snake bite you can get in the NORTH- eastern portion of the US. With quick treatment, you may still lose the limb bitten, etc. But dying and limb loss from a Copperhead is rare, and if you get treatment soon, you should be fine after Copperhead invenomation.. I have read this stuff online, I have no firsthand knowledge of this stuff though.

Some years ago, we had a neighbor who neglected his yard for much of the spring and summer, mowing only when he was ordered to by the city. The rats and voles had a themselves quite a time racing back and forth from their jungle to our vegetable garden....it was so bad that we had to file a complaint. Never saw a snake but I can only assume that there were plenty of them out there.

This was a nice neighborhood ; they were both well educated professionals but absolute swine when it came to the inside and outside of their home.

>I have taken my electric sprayer and sprayed RoundUp about 15' over the property line before. ;)Continued behavior of this nature involving my property would result in a visit from the cops.

Well, another neighbor of mine went over with his riding lawn mower and mowed a section of the other neighbor's lawn. But it wasn't to be generous. The neighbor who hasn't mowed, has a section of land out front. Those 2 neighbors have a shared driveway, and there's a triangle shaped plot of land out front with a huge boulder and a sign that says the name of the business of the neighbor who went out and mowed. His sign has been there forever, long before our other neighbor moved in.

When the neighbor moved in, my other neighbor walked over and said if you let me keep my sign here, I will use my snow plow and keep our shared driveway free of snow.

So yesterday, that neighbor went out and mowed that triangle section since the hay was blocking his business sign.

He also went to the guys lawn and mowed 2 rows closest to the road.

The guy is still living there in the house. I don't know if he's letting the house go or not.

This post was edited by ilovemytrees on Thu, Jul 3, 14 at 7:03

I know a guy in Schenectady who sounds like your neighbor. My ex- brother-in-law. I'll shut up now.

"Continued behavior of this nature involving my property would result in a visit from the cops."

There is no lawn there anymore, it's all weeds, privet, and rampant wisteria. Besides, if they ever decide to go down that road, I'd be more than happy to talk about the three junk cars they have in the backyard that violate city ordinance. ;)