[man] Dude, what the. . .
Your lawn mower's definitely broken. [narrator]<i> Mowing the lawn can lead to some</i> <i> untidy disputes between neighbors. </i> <i> Just ask Deanna Fowles and her family.
</i> <i> They claim that for the past three years,</i> <i> their next-door neighbor has turned life</i> <i> on their serene Idaho street</i> <i>into the front lines of an ugly neighborhood lawn war. </i> When I first met my neighbor, she seemed very nice. I wasn't close with her, but I was able to coexist with her.
[narrator]<i> While there were no weekend barbecues</i> <i> between the two households, things remained civil</i> <i> until the Fowles's neighbor decides to lend them</i> <i> her green thumb. </i> The issues between me and my neighbor started pretty innocently. She had come over and said, <i> "The way you cut your grass is a little lower than mine</i> <i> and it looks uneven,</i> and would you be okay if I took over mowing that spot, <i> since I see it a lot by my house?
"</i> Well, gosh, if it means so much to you, yeah, you can mow that area, no big deal. [narrator]<i> But a big deal it becomes</i> <i> when Deanna's 12-year-old daughter mows the lawn one day. </i> I get my neighbor running over, screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs.
"How dare you? You told me I could mow this area. <i> You're going back on your promise.
"</i> <i> Complete meltdown. </i> And it's not like my daughter ruined the lawn. She just cut it a little shorter.
[narrator]<i> Deanna apologizes to her neighbor,</i> <i> but things don't improve. </i> <i> They get worse. </i> We would come home from work.
She's literally landscaping, mowing our whole entire lawn. Like she's been hired to do so. That's when my husband decided, okay, I'm gonna go over nicely and ask her, "Can you just not come on our property?
" And that was not well received. [narrator]<i> The neighbor exacerbates</i> <i> the situation further,</i> <i> and starts arguing over their shared property line. </i> [Deanna] That doesn't belong to you.
That is city property! [narrator]<i> Then, like in so many other neighborhood wars,</i> <i> things turn petty. </i> [Deanna]<i> My neighbor's a very dramatic person.
</i> <i> She didn't want our family</i> <i> to benefit from anything of hers,</i> including water. She has sprinklers over there, and she didn't want our lawn to be any greener <i> from her water. </i> <i> So she obviously had to spend some money to buy this material</i> to make these large Plexiglas dividers that she would put up and take down every day.
<i> And that would stop the water</i> from basically splashing onto our property. [narrator]<i> And if that isn't miserly enough,</i> <i> with the help of a visiting family member,</i> <i> the neighbor uses a similar technique</i> <i> when tossing grass seed on her lawn. </i> [Deanna]<i> She's got a cardboard barrier</i> <i> holding that up, like, really close to my husband</i> <i> to prevent any grass seed from coming onto our lawn.
</i> Just another way to irritate us, essentially looking for a reaction. [narrator]<i> To create privacy for their family,</i> <i> the Fowles's plant trees down one side of their house. </i> <i> But their neighbor calls the police,</i> <i> claiming the trees are planted on her side of the property.
</i> [Deanna]<i> We actually went</i> about a foot into our property, so she wouldn't be close to the trees. The cops basically told her, "I don't know what your issue is. They're on her property.
Um, and you should appreciate the privacy if you have an issue with your neighbor. " And her response was, "That doesn't matter. I want them taken down.
" [narrator]<i> The woman's pettiness soon turns peculiar,</i> <i> as she starts coming out nightly</i> <i> to survey the Fowles's property. </i> <i> With no end to the harassment in sight,</i> <i> the Fowles's get a six-month restraining order</i> <i> against the woman. </i> In that restraining order, she couldn't be outside when we were outside.
<i> What she started doing was,</i> <i> she would come stand on the sidewalk</i> <i> and just stare for hours at a time. </i> Restraining orders are only good as the prosecutors who are willing to back them up. Numerous times police came out, saw the footage.
Yup, that's a violation. And the prosecutor says, "I'm not gonna do anything. " So that's what's the most frustrating, is you do what the cop says, you obey the law, and you kind of are just left being harassed.
[narrator]<i> Deanna, though, has no intention</i> <i> of taking the easy way out of this feud</i> <i> and moving her family to a new neighborhood. </i> <i> So for now, this war rages on. </i> My kids were born and raised in this house.
All our memories are here. <i> I envision staying here forever. </i> It's hard.
It's hard to leave something like that.