A beautiful tree can really make your home look nice, and it can provide shade to everyone as well.

Sometimes, however, trees drop fruit and other things onto the neighbors property, which can cause a problem if the neighbors want to be jerks.

In this story, the neighbor actually tried to handle the tree against the wishes of the property owner, but that wasn’t happening.

Check it out.

Tree guys vs. Pool guys – I win, but so does he, after he moves away

Classic pool guys vs. tree guys.

I’m a tree guy. Neighbor behind me was a pool guy.

And a prairie dog – meaning the kind of neighbor that likes to peek over everyone’s fence and get in their business.

We’ll call him PD for Prairie Dog. His wife? PDW.

PD is a contractor, and likes to “fix” everyone’s stuff.

He tries to be “neighborly” when he tells you he’ll help you fix your decrepit dog house or fence, or whatever, but it’s like, “no one asked you.”

So my wife is out back one day and PD pokes his head over the fence to tell her our Chinese hackberry trees we have growing in the yard are dropping stuff in his pool and on his deck and ruining everything.

Now my wife and I have recognized this and in fact had an appointment with an arborist to take a look to see if we could treat the trees to make it stop fruiting.

These things are big and beautiful and we don’t want to take them out if we can avoid it.

No problem with waiting for an expert.

Said appointment was a couple weeks away.

So my wife tells PD what the plan is, and he says, “That won’t work. Gotta remove the trees. Let me know when you want to take them out and I’ll help you do it.”

What a nice guy.

My wife tells him we’d rather get the opinion of an expert and then he asks her the dreaded question all wives hate: “Is your husband home? Let me talk to him.”

Now my wife is not to be trifled with.

I commend her for not knifing him where he stood.

Instead, she comes inside where I’m watching a movie with my sons and says to me, “Go out and talk to the neighbor before I do something I regret. He wants to take out the trees.”

She explains the scenario, I thank her for her restraint and for staying out of jail.

I go out to talk to PD.

He tells me the same thing he just told my wife.

I tell him about the arborist.

He tells me the same thing about taking the trees out, and that he would be happy to help when I want to do it.

As long as it is in the next week or two, that is.

When I tell him that we are going to wait for the opinion of an expert, he tells me that he is going to have to see a copy of my homeowners insurance.

This is a little bit out of left field for me, and so I simply roll my eyes and say “yeah you know what? I’ll go right inside and get that for you. Wait here.”

He knows I’m being sarcastic at this point and tells me that the trees have to come out because the roots are growing on his side and there’s no way they can stay.

How about he minds his own business.

So now, we are talking about two different problems here, and I say “I’m not going to make any decisions here and now. I’m going to have an arborist look at it and I’ll let you know what he says.“

I go back inside and leave PD standing there in his Oakley wraparound sunglasses.

The next day, I am sitting in my backyard enjoying a cold drink and barbecuing up some meat to enjoy.

I notice PD standing on the fence trimming the tree branches that had grown on his side all the way up to infinity, as is his right to do.

That didn’t make the activity any less jerky, but whatever.

He notices me sitting in the back yard and gives me a look.

I smile and raise my drink, and he goes back to trimming the trees.

All the time, he has a sour look on his face and keeps glancing over at me.

So, I go and stand right underneath him and watch him as he trims the trees, sipping my drink and staring up at his work.

After a few minutes of this, as he is wiping the sweat off his brow, I remark, “you missed a spot.“

I stroll away chuckling to myself and throw my empty charcoal bag into the trash on the side of the house, and go back to my comfortable spot under my patio.

A few minutes later prairie dog wife, PDW, sticks her head up over top of the fence and barks, “do you think this is funny??”

These two deserve each other.

To which I replied up at PD, still standing on the fence, “You told on me to your wife? Smooth move.”

At this point, PDW gets pretty livid, and starts going on a tirade about how we have ruined the concrete with the droppings from the trees.

I reply that I have concrete as well and that the stains come up pretty easily with some powdered detergent, and that’s got to be a lot less effort than chopping down a tree.

I felt no further obligation to explain about any arborist or any other professional.

They both go back inside after a while and I have a nice barbecue in the backyard, now dreaming up all kinds of fun ways that I can really rub it in to these people.

I’m thinking of subscribing them to the Arbor Day foundation, Green Peace, and maybe hanging a sign in the branches pointed at their house that says “stop bullying this tree.”

You, know. Harmless fun.

But the gloves came off when I received a text the next day from my wife as she got home from work and I was still at the office.

It was a picture of the roots of my tree completely severed and cut away from the fence.

I would be irate.

My wife had a few choice words to say about it.

So I came home, and I called my local police department.

Now I live in a decent sized city, but the city services are all kind of like Mayberry, where everyone knows each other and still gives you that small town feel.

I like that. So when I called up, the dispatcher on the non-emergency line offered to let me speak to an officer right away.

When I tell this officer the story, he asks me “Wait a minute. So this guy set boots on your property and cut the roots to your tree?“ I say “yes“ and ask him what he would do if he caught somebody in his backyard with a reciprocating saw in his hand.

The officer tells me he’d better not advise me on this.

I chuckle and tell the officer “message received,” and he asks me for PD‘s phone number so he can call him up and ask him about what happened personally.

I happily oblige him and give him PD’s number (which PD had graciously given me to call when I was ready to have him help me take the trees out), and the officer tells me he will call me back as soon as he has spoken to PD.

Less than a half hour later, I get a call back from the officer, who tells me “Well, he cut your roots, that much is for sure.

He admitted it to me. But he claims that he did it from his side of the fence.

Now I don’t know how that’s possible without having the world’s longest arms because your backyard fence has to be six or 7 feet tall, right?”

I laugh.

I would sue him regardless.

He continues, “Because he admitted it, he’s liable if the tree dies. I don’t know if you have investigated tree law, but it’s really expensive to replace a tree and you could have a lot of fun suing him over that. I don’t think he’s going to be bothering you about this tree anymore because he and I had a nice chat about it.“

I start laughing my head off and tell the officer, “That tree isn’t going anywhere. It’s a Chinese hackberry tree. It will survive the end of the world.“

To which the officer replies, “I wouldn’t tell him that if I were you.“

I never heard from PD about those trees ever again. Eventually, we had the trees treated so they stopped dropping stuff everywhere.

But I waited until PD moved away before removing the trees entirely.

Well, that’s mighty nice of him.

The root system was getting a bit out of control, and they started affecting the next door neighbors that I actually like.

I wouldn’t want to cause them any damage.

They are nice people after all.

I should’ve called my former neighbor to help me. “Hey Prairie Dog! I’m ready to take the trees out! Can you help?”

Some people just don’t realize that they will get better results being nice than being a jerk.

Oh well, let’s look at what some of the people in the comments had to say.

It was a great story.

Wow, what a jerk!

No problems like this with renting.

The police were perfect in this story.

Very funny comment.

If he would have asked nicely, he could have avoided the problem.

A little patience goes a long way.

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