Here I thought the old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn was just a fable. Apparently, it does happen in real life. I kid, of course, today’s story isn’t a one-to-one correlation, but there is a thing or two the old man could learn from it.

A woman recently shared a story of petty revenge, detailing how she had a problem with this one teen using her front yard as a shortcut home. Him trampling the grass was a big no-no, so, after a few verbal warnings, she decided to use the power of gardening to teach this young lad a lesson in watch where you’re going.

More Info: Reddit

It feels like folks are biologically predisposed to use shortcuts, no matter the circumstances, even if it will shave off literal seconds off your journey

Image Credits: Andrea Parrish – Geyer (not the actual photo)

More often than not, shortcuts can end badly, like stepping into recently “fertilized” earthy soil ripe for floral treatment

Image Credits: u/Auroraah

Talking didn’t work, so the next best thing was to plant some flowers, during the process of which the homeowner used compost and manure to seal the deal

Image Credits: Virginia State Parks (not the actual photo)

The story goes that Redditor u/Auroraah lives in a spatial predicament—a corner house—that is not the most intuitive for some folks to manoeuvre around. Most people behave themselves and use the traditional pathways set in stone by previous generations, yet this one kid defies all manner of common decency and decides to cut corners straight through OP’s lawn.

Since words didn’t help, OP decided that enough is enough and figured she’d use agricultural reasoning. So, one day she whipped out some compost and manure and other types of fertilizing solutions, let it soak in the cool haze of a sprinkler right on that particular patch of grass where the kid would walk and then she waited. This was all to plant flowers, remember [wink].

Soon a wild kid appears around the corner and sinks his branded shoes straight into the earthy goodness that is OP’s manure trap. It goes without saying that he walked into that one. Let’s just hope he never walks down there again.

Image Credits: US Department of Agriculture (not the actual photo)

It also goes without saying that folks in the community loved it. Kicking off the comment section are the people who had ideas for further improvements on kid deterrents, like using a motion-activated sprinkler system to douse your enemies in copious amounts of H2O. Or water-based dyes in a hose. Or, if you’re evil enough, more devious liquids can be utilized.

Others shared their own stories of frustration and redemption. One commenter’s household had the same problem, except it was cars and not kids that would drive over because of a sloped curb. A rock garden resolved that issue fast after a kid lost an oil pan.

There was actually another story unlike the others where kids would often take a shortcut through a family’s backyard. The family didn’t mind it, but one snowy day some bullies were chasing a kid down the yard and the kid ran around a pond that was covered up by the snow. The bullies didn’t know that and ended up getting soaked in 3 feet of frozen ice water.

There was one other commenter who took note of OP’s short-lived thought of walking out right as the teen was doing the moonwalk through the mud, flowers in hand, and nonchalantly apologizing. Their question was why apologize at all? This segment of Redditors were all for making the kid pay even more, scolding him or otherwise making him regret it.

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Image Credits: photoeverywhere (not the actual photo)

Now, if manure, compost and fertilizer seem too funny to even work, believe it or not, it’s kinda sorta a legit solution to this. Well, maybe not the fertilizer itself, but natural barriers like hedges or maybe something more extreme like cacti are a solution. Either this or an actual fence might just be enough to make folks think that climbing is not worth shaving a few seconds off their journey.

Of course, sprinklers are always an option. Even more so motion-activated ones. But the more reasonable solution at this stage would be to talk to the kids, or their parents, and try to resolve the issue that way.

But, hey, if that doesn’t work, there’s always options like having a dog around, installing surveillance cameras (helps with porch pirates and other criminal rabble too), or simply putting up a no trespassing sign because the first one will bite you, the second one will see you get bitten and the last one will put you into legal trouble because private property laws are a thing.

And that about wraps up our topic for today. Why not leave some of your people-deterrent tactics in the comment section below and be sure to rub your human interface devices up against that upvote button. But don’t make it weird.

Folks online thought that was brilliant thinking on the part of the Redditor, slapping that upvote button over 5,000 times

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