Having your tree cut without your consent means war.

In this case, a man lost more than a friendly “good morning” from his neighbors after cutting down their large maple tree.

Let’s read the story.

Destroy our tree? We’ll destroy your driveway.

By North American standards, our house is old.

It is really old.

It’s older than the town; hell it’s older than Confederation.

The house was originally built by a merchant from the area like 200 years ago.

It’s old.

This also means it’s special.

With its age comes a very big property line.

Apart from a couple adjustments here and there to account for infrastructure and housing development, it’s basically unchanged from a hundred years ago.

It rarely ever comes up here, but in any dispute relating to property lines, the official town plan takes precedent; and our property line crosses over into our neighbours’ property.

This will be important later.

Duly noted.

And now for the two major players in this tale: Our ******* neighbour, who we will call… Lumpy.

He’s just the worst; he ran an illegal chop-shop in his backyard, and seemed to be deathly afraid of trees.

He also always took a two-week long vacation in summer, and it was always at the end of July – this part is also important later.

The other one is my dad.

At the time he was in Government Oversight, but before that he was in the Department of Justice, and his major responsibilities included training Crown attorneys.

This included the Attorneys General.

This means he knows how to deal with legal matters.

In the pecking order, Dad was actually pretty low, but the Crown knew and respected him.

They were also keenly aware that Dad knew the law inside and out.

If there was anything even remotely resembling a legal dispute, Dad was almost always in the right with his argument.

His knowledge would be put to good use really soon.

Now we begin our tale:

“The Slight.”

The line between our yard and Lumpy’s was pretty clear: our side was grass, protestant lilies, shrubs, and trees; his was a gravel driveway.

Before the incident, there was a large Manitoba maple tree growing there.

It was very old, but grew in such a way that it blocked just enough sunlight to have a pleasant level of light going through the window.

That sounds lovely. But someone was bothered by the tree…

We had no intentions of ever removing it – maybe trim it a little if it got too close to the windows.

However – some lower branches were sagging onto Lumpy’s driveway.

He asked if he could cut down some of the lower branches so that his car wouldn’t get damaged when he drove in and out.

It was a fair enough request, and he did ask permission first.

So we told him to get a landscaper and a quote, because we sure as hell weren’t going to let Lumpy do it, and were okay paying for that.

The problem was going to be solved the right way… If Lumpy hadn’t intervened.

A couple days later we were all on a day trip somewhere, and when we got back, Lumpy comes over and tells us not to worry about the landscaper because he “took care of it.”

Red flags were waving at that statement.

So we went and checked the tree – bastard cut the entire tree down.

This is heartbreaking and also infuriating. Well, now Lumpy was in for a ride.

Then, to add insult to injury, he painted the stump with some sort of weird grey stuff.

Don’t know what it was, but it had to have been toxic as ****, because nothing ever grew on that stump again – not even fungi.

So we’re understandably ****** off, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it because there’s no proof.

So now we’ve got a stump that was once a beautiful tree, a smug neighbour, and seemingly no course of action to take.

But as it turns out, they had a wild card.

Dad didn’t accept that scenario, and he had a plan.

“The Plan.”

As I said earlier, Dad knew the law inside and out – so he began to plan things out.

He made a few phone calls to the town’s civil architect, a couple inspectors, the local landscaper Lumpy was going to get that quote from, and a contractor.

He visited city hall and got a copy of the official town plan.

Which, remember, is the final word on property lines. He had everything arranged, and now he began to wait.

The tree had to be avenged.

“The Revenge.”

Like clockwork, Lumpy went on vacation, and the plan was enacted.

Over the course of two weeks, we expanded.

We rebuilt our fence to new dimensions.

Re-arranged the shrubs; dug up the gravel driveway and put fresh dirt and grass over it; and planted a weeping willow in a spot where, as it grew, would always hang, and shed, into Lumpy’s yard.

Some pettiness thrown in for good measure.

With the expanded fence and shrubbery, Lumpy’s driveway was a small strip of pavement.

Maybe half a metre wide, the fence placed an old maple and a hawthorn on our side, but because of how the two trees grew, most of it was on Lumpy’s side.

The key point is that the placement of the trunk dictates whose property it’s on, so it’s our tree that he can’t touch, no matter how annoying or destructive it is.

Tough luck, Lumpy.

With the new dimensions, the chop-shop he was running was now on our side of the fence – but because it was illegal, it was just scrap metal as far as the law was concerned.

So we sold it to a local scrap yard.

By the time Lumpy came back, our yard had expanded almost three metres into “his” yard.

Waiting for him was Dad, the civil architect, and a lawyer with a stack of documents outlining, in full detail, that what they did was 100% legal, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

I’ve never seen a tree be so thoroughly avenged before. Lumpy got schooled.

Let’s see what Reddit has to comment on this.

Oh yes.

A reader shares their thoughts.

Compliments.

Who wouldn’t?

Another reader chimes in.

His dad knew exactly what he was doing.

He didn’t know how good he had it, until he lost it.

He messed with the wrong people!

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.