When a tree falls down due to a storm, you can’t really control where all the branches go.

What would you do if you were cleaning up branches for one neighbor when another neighbor came over to you demanding that you get the branches off of her property?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so when she wouldn’t stop harassing him, he finally swore at her and told her to go home. Now, she is upset with him, and his wife thinks he was out of line.

I do think that he could have handled it better, but she was the one who started the problem. Read on to see what you think.

AITA for cursing at a neighbor who kept pestering me while I was helping an out of town neighbor by cutting up fallen limbs after a storm?

So, during a major storm the other day, the top of a 75 ft. oak tree broke off bringing down several 10″ diameter branches with it.

The branches fell pretty much on 50/50 on two neighbors properties and laid about halfway across our private lane which runs across Neighbor 1’s property.

Neighbor 1 is out of town for a couple weeks so I text him to relax, I’ll take care of it and head down with my trusty Milwaukee Tool chain saw.

That is a lot of work.

It’s about 90 degrees and a similar humidity and I’m cutting off the branches and then cutting the 10″ limbs into log size pieces.

The stuff fell within 3 feet of the property line and I’m making one pile for the limbs and stacking the logs in another.

Is this really a big deal right now, lady?

I’m about 20 minutes into a 30 minute project when Neighbor 2 comes out of her house walking towards me jawing at me about throwing debris onto her property.

I explain that I’m merely getting it out of the road for now and that the owners will take care of any debris when they get home.

She keeps jawing at me, saying she just spend hundreds of dollars cleaning up another debris from another neighbor’s tree that fell in her yard a few weeks ago.

I say again, it’s just temporary. It will all be cleaned up.

Who can blame him for yelling at her?

She continues and insists that I get all the debris off of her property completely.

So I say, sure lady and proceed to haul all the crap to the other side of the lane and place it squarely on Neighbor 1’s property.

She’s still jawing at me. “Make sure it’s all off my property”, that sort of thing.

I finally had enough and tell her to shut up.

He is not backing down at all.

She was aghast. “What did you say?”

“I said shut the heck up and go back into your house.”

I continued to work on clearing the debris and her husband comes out to see what the fuss is all about.

I say, “I’m doing a favor for your neighbor and your wife is out here driving me nuts. Tell her to shut up, go back in her house and take her meds.” He turns around and leaves.

Where does she get off telling him what to do?

She has my cell number from a skunk issue we dealt with a couple years ago, so sure enough, I get a diatribe of an email later that evening that starts with “1. Don’t ever use the F word towards me again.”

Followed by 3 more multi-paragraph bullets and bullet #5 being “5. See #1 above.”

To which I reply, “Take your meds and leave me the heck alone.”

I’m sure he won’t be sad that she won’t talk to him anymore.

To which she replies, “To recap:…” followed by another diatribe of about 6 paragraphs.

To which I replied, “To recap: Take your meds and leave me the heck alone.”

Her response: “You seem not to be able to communicate without using the F word. Goodbye.”

Maybe this wasn’t the ideal way to handle it, but it is understandable.

So, I absolutely intentionally dropped the F bomb initially cuz she just wouldn’t shut up.

Then when she instructed me not to “use the F word towards her again” it was instantly apparent how I could get this crackpot to leave me alone and it worked.

AITA?

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Sure, this is not the right thing to do, and it may cause some drama in the neighborhood. That being said, she should have been nicer from the beginning, so that is where the real problem is.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about it.

These are valid questions.

This commenter is likely right.

Sometimes, being a jerk is the right course of action.

This person says that he was a jerk, but she left him with no other choice.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who is thinking of alerting the city to their neighbor’s campers being lived-in while parked on the street.

Her husband knew she was a bit hot-tempered.

She started it, but he could have taken the high ground. This is a classic situation where everyone involved is acting poorly.

What makes it worse is that this may even bleed into causing problems between her and the neighbor he was trying to help.