There are good neighbor and there are bad neighbors, and I’ve had both at the same time. Thankfully, I’ve never had neighbors that were so horrible that they stole from me, well, except for that one time. Nevermind. I’ve had horrible neighbors but I wasn’t able to determine which one was the theif.

That’s where this story is different.

Imagine living in an area that gets really cold in the winter, but the only way you can heat your home is by burning firewood. What would you do if some of your firewood disappeared? If you suspected a neighbor stealing it, would you call them out on it or just get more firewood and perhaps keep it somewhere where it’d be harder to steal?

In this story, one family is in this situation, and the dad confronts the neighbors. The neighbors are obviously lying when they deny stealing the firewood, so the dad sets a trap to teach them a lesson and make it very obvious that they’re lying.

Let’s read all about it.

Neighbors living room exploded for stealing firewood.

In the early 90’s my family lived in a lower middle class neighborhood.

Our neighbors were very poor with about 5 kids, but extremely nice.

They couldn’t afford heating to be installed in their house so they relied on using firewood the father got from some of his friends at work, during the winter.

Here’s the problem.

Winter came and their father started using the firewood. After a few weeks of freezing temperatures he started to notice that every night some of his firewood would go missing.

Now, we had these other neighbors who weren’t the greatest, and by that, I mean they were complete jerks. They had frequent police visits for noise violations and god knows what else, they let their kids throw rocks at passing cars, and they were pretty well known for having stolen from other neighbors in the past.

So back to the family having their firewood stolen.

After about a week of firewood going missing, the father went over to the horrible neighbors’ house and asked if they had been taking the firewood.

The neighbor had a plan to prove that the horrible neighbors were lying.

They denied it, and seeing as there wasn’t anything the father could do about it legally, he came up with a plan.

He found the nicest piece of wood he could find, drilled a hole in it, filled it with those quarter stick of dynamite fireworks from earlier that year, glued the hole shut, and placed the piece of wood at the top of his wood pile.

Surely enough, the piece of wood was gone the next day.

Here’s what happened…

About a week later the neighborhood was woken up by a big bang and the jerk kids running out of the house exclaiming, ” our fireplace just exploded!”

Luckily no one was injured.

My dad tells me that when he looked outside, the horrible neighbors had what he describes as a “Loony Toon-ish” hole in their chimney with soot all over their lawn, and presumably their family room.

Wow! I hope they learned their lesson not to steal the firewood.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a couple whose new neighbors’ construction noise is ruining the whole neighborhood vibe.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person loves the revenge.

Probably.

I hope so too.

These are good questions.

Talk about explosive revenge!

I’d love to know the answers to the questions posed in that last comment. I assume they stopped stealing firewood after that instance, but honestly, they may not have realized what caused the explosion. Maybe they did, but it’s possible that they thought something else had gone wrong.

I assume the bad neighbors didn’t try to get back at the good neighbors, or I’d at least hope that would’ve been included in the story.

With an exploded fireplace that looks like something out of a cartoon, they certainly suffered big consequences for stealing.

It’s not like firewood is that expensive. The bad neighbors should’ve just bought or chopped their own. Or, if they were desperate, I agree with the comment that the nice but poor neighbors probably would’ve shared if they had only asked.

The lesson here is not to steal. Obviously, it’s wrong, but you never know what major consequences you could face.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tenant who decided to stop returning his neighbor’s misplaced laundry after two years.