This neighbor of ours has lots of animals...including peacocks. The peacocks make lots of noise at dusk during certain times of the year...and they used to terrify Synnove. She couldn't sleep because of those obnoxious things! We would never actually see them though. We tried convincing Synnove that the "heacocks" were harmless, and even showed her many youtube videos and photos online. Nothing worked. One day, Adam was driving with the kids and passed by our neighbor's house when the peacocks were in view. Adam stopped to show Synnove and the neighbor came over to meet Adam. At this point, Adam told her about her stray horse and she said that she didn't know her fence was broken and would try her best to fix it.
The horse stayed away for a while after that. A few months later, it started to come back....and it started to bring a friend. Suddenly, the harmless horse that stayed away turned into two not-so-harmless horses that liked to hang out in our front driveway! I was starting to get pretty ticked because every time they came around, I had to make sure the kids were inside. The second horse was quite friendly, and I didn't know what could could happen if it got near them. I tried shooing them away many times. Sometimes it worked...but most times it didn't. After enduring about a month of this nonsense, there was an accident that happened when one of the horses impaled itself on the broken fence and died. No, it wasn't our fault, and we had no idea it had happened until the police arrived. It was hunting season, and the neighbor thought the horse had been shot. Of course, she found out otherwise after tracing the blood trail. It was a sad situation, but we hoped that her fence would finally be fixed for good.
An entire horse-free year passed by. However, a new problem emerged: beagles. From what I've heard, this neighbor of ours has many dogs of many breeds...but none more than her pack of beagles. Sometime last summer/fall her beagles had puppies and she decided to keep them. I saw them a few times when I was driving down the road...in the road. They were idiotic and they wouldn't move...I always had to drive around them. Then, we started getting early morning wake-up "barks" at 5 and 6AM when the dogs were on the trail of some deer or other critter near our house. There were at least 6 of them; two adults and a handful of puppies. I wish I could accurately describe the sound this pack of nuisance's make. It's like the sound that most dogs make when they are hurt all of a sudden...that screechy yelp. Multiply that screechy yelp by 6! It was awful!! Not only would it wake me up, but it would wake my kids up. That alone ticked me off more than anything.
The beagles visited our house several times daily. They were harmless, but incredibly disturbing. I chased them off our property many, many, MANY times. I say "chased" because that's literally what I had to do. It was enough to just shoo them up the bank, I actually had to run them up the bank. If I stopped, the dogs would stop. They would look back at me like "can I stay...please?" But I had absolutely no sympathy for their pathetic hound faces. Adam even had a live trap set out to catch a critter that was attempting to get at our chickens. He caught a beagle in that trap at least 2 times...it might have been 3. Still, the beagles continued to visit for several months.
By mid-winter, the beagle visits dwindled. I was so thankful! Then, the peacocks started to visit in the early spring. I was weird, because I had NEVER seen them in the two years we had been here. One morning, I was still in bed and it sounded like there was a goose outside my window. I looked out on the deck and there was nothing. I went back to bed, heard it again, but ignored it. About 20 minutes later I went downstairs to find about 4 peacocks outside the sliding window! My first thought was "seriously...is this ever going to end?!" They visited on and off for about a week, but I haven't seen them back since.
About 2-3 weeks ago, we started seeing the neighbor's mangy looking sheep in our front driveway (there's like 5-7 of them). Fortunately, all I had to do was open the window and say "go home!" and they would run back home. But, in the last week, they have gotten much more bold. They now visit several times a day and have proven to be the worst nuisance of all the animals that have ever visited. Not only do they leave their droppings EVERYwhere, but they have eaten half of our chick food in the garage. I've caught them in the garage at least 3 times. Each time they have made a huge mess. Shooing them has become extremely difficult...so, we've had to use varying other methods. Yes, we've called the neighbor, but she hasn't done what she said she would do. Last night, I spent a good hour scooping up sheep poop from all over our entire yard and driveway.
Adam and I are at the end of our rope. We're trying our best to be good neighbors...but our patience is running out. We knew that dealing with a stray animal here and there was a part of living in the sticks...but this is just plain ridiculous.
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