"Ronny Good" wrote in message
...
About once a week, someone in our neighborhood gets turfed. We are in a
development about a mile off a main road. Our place got it twice this
month. The people drive down the sidewalk, then do a doughnut and down over
the curb. With the ground as soft as it is, there are some huge ruts.
Reports have been made with the authorities, but it's not like they are
going to post an officer to watch the neighborhood over such trivial stuff.
My question is, how the heck do you catch these people? I got a couple of
2x4x10's that I screwed a bunch of 3" screws through, and spray painted them
black. I was going to lay them out in the yard, but I'm afraid someone
walking their dog might get their animal hurt. What's a logical solution to
catch the perpetrators? Some type of stationary video camera? Thing is,
they may not turf our place again, but someone else in the neighborhood.


This is Turtle.

I don't know how serious you are but there is one way to stop it forever. i had
a uncle one time that had cars running through his front yard when they got
drunk and did now want to stay to the road and take the short cut across his
yard. He went to the scrap yard and bought him some rail road steel rails and
dug a 6 foot hole and put a rail road steel rail ever 2 to 3 feet apart with 18"
sticking out above the ground. If you crossed his yard you had to hit the rails.
For Legal reasons he put a yard plant by everyone of them and called the plant
protectors. After 3 drunks hitting them and having to call a wrecker to come to
lift the car off the rails and get the car off the rails which all three got DWI
tickets also. He had no more trouble with this. Also the cars insurance had to
replace the plant protector and have the yard land scaped again.

One item of interst here is the 18" is the point where the steel takes the
engine out of the car. Also if you talk to the fellow at the scrap yard he will
cut the rails in 7 1/2 foot pieces for you. also a 1/2 ton truck will not haul
more than about 8 -- 7 1/2 foot section of rail.

There was one that tried to sue him for having rails in his yard but by Texas
state law you can't tell the home owner what material he can use to protect
plants with. Now if he called it a car stop with no plant next to it , you could
sue him for the damage.

At the scrap yards, scrap rail road steel sells for about $5.00 a 100 pounds.

TURTLE