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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Years ago I was at a dinner party at a nearby 
friend's house. Guests included our elected 
county judge. During after-dinner talk, John 
noted that the most contentious cases he heard 
involved property line disputes and charges of 
trespassing. Serious felonies caused anger but trespassing caused rage.
Something there is in many of us otherwise gentle 
folk that brings out the base animal within when 
our territory is invaded. This article by TNYT 
gardening editor motivates me to ask you how you 
feel about and deal with those who violate your property rights.

Coming Late to a Call to Arms

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/anne_raver/index.html?inline=nyt-per>ANNE 
RAVER
Published: November 23, 2006

EVEN though I grew up around hunters, I’ve been 
wary of guns all my life. I’ve never wanted to kill a goose, or a deer.

But here I am, standing in the meadow, inserting 
a slug into the chamber of my single-barrel 
shotgun. I lift the gun to shoulder level, left 
eye closed and right eye open, and sight down the 
smooth barrel. I try to keep my arms steady as I 
aim for the middle of a cross taped onto plywood.

The boom of igniting gunpowder, the cloud of 
smoke, are a shock to the senses. A hole the size 
of a grape is punched through the target by the 
slug, which is designed to expand on impact.

“Two inches from dead center,” says my boyfriend, 
Rock, who is already a good shot, focusing his little scope on the target.

So why is a peacenik garden writer learning how to use lethal firearms?

For one thing, when we first moved to the farm, 
in central Maryland, we found a number of guns, 
unloaded shotguns and .22 rifles, stashed in 
closets, and ammunition tucked into bedroom 
drawers. We gathered them up, to keep them out of 
the reach of children and visitors. But handling 
them sparked our interest, and we decided that 
learning how they worked was safer than studied ignorance.

When I came back to my family homestead about 15 
years ago, no one had been regularly walking the 
125-acre property. My father had died after a 
long illness, and my mother confined her walks to the yard.

I found the tracks of all-terrain vehicles 
crisscrossing the woods. These machines have come 
with suburbia, and the houses cropping up on the 
old fields. The new residents don’t want to walk 
down to the stream or through the woods. Some of 
them even joyride through fields of young green wheat.

Sometimes I could trace the tracks back to a 
particular house, in which case I would try to 
talk to the people living there and invite them 
to enjoy our land on foot. I often met resistance.

“Oh, we weren’t hurting anything,” one man told 
me. “We just like to get out in the woods and enjoy nature.”

When I explained that his machine was eroding the 
stream banks, crushing wildflowers and disturbing 
the birds and other animals, and that besides, he 
was trespassing, his patronizing tone took on a hostile note.

“Well,” he said. “We have a different attitude 
about nature than you do. We think this woods is for everyone.”

I have often used much the same words, picturing 
quiet birders, children wading in the stream, 
even careful hunters, who keep down the deer 
population. But hearing them from someone who 
never walks when he can ride filled me with a kind of primitive rage.

Our family has lived here for five generations. 
We have a deed dated 1761, which granted 
thousands of acres to the Bond family. My 
great-great-grandfather, a Pennsylvania Dutch 
farmer, was smart enough to marry a Bond, thus 
claiming title to about 300 acres. Over time, it 
was divided among his descendants.

Owning land is a tricky thing, if you are of the 
opinion that most of it was stolen from the 
Indians: Who am I to keep people off “my” 
property? But we have preserved the farm under a 
conservation easement, meaning it can never be 
developed, and are trying to be good stewards. 
Many of my new neighbors do not think of land as 
something that must be nurtured if it is going to 
sustain life. It’s a medium, like AstroTurf, for recreation.

When I informed my neighbor that I would call the 
police if I found him riding through our woods 
again, our polite sparring was over. “It’s people 
like you who ruin things for everyone!” he 
screamed. “Everything was fine until you came here!”

That’s when I considered stretching wire taut 
between the trees so no one could trespass on my 
land. The man’s attitude had triggered something 
deep inside me that was now rising into my 
throat. I wasn’t exactly proud of this part of 
me, but there it was, my barking dog.

My brother Jim, who owns a farm in western 
Maryland, warned me that I could be sued or 
imprisoned for injuring a trespasser with such a 
barrier. So Rock and I felled trees across the 
paths instead. Sometimes, when we hear that 
familiar whine, we take chase in our ancient 
pickup. It’s not that we expect to catch anyone. 
We’re just making things uncomfortable ­ and most trespassers go elsewhere.

But the idea of learning to shoot one of those 
guns never occurred to me, until two winters ago 
when I heard what sounded like a chainsaw ripping 
through the quiet air of a snowy afternoon. I ran 
out to see a bright blue snowmobile careering 
over our cornfield, spiraling across its white 
blanket of snow, a plume of exhaust in its wake. 
I drove after it in my Subaru Forester, waving my 
hand as if to say, “Slow down.”

The driver ignored me, roaring past the front of 
my car, then swerving back, and screeching to a 
halt a few inches from my window.

When I told him that this was a conservation 
area, that we did not allow snowmobiles on our 
land, and that if he persisted I would call the 
police, he cursed me, told me he would burn down our barn.

As he roared off, I realized how naïve I was 
being, confronting these strangers.

I didn’t get much help from the state police, who 
told me that, essentially, I could bring no 
charges other than trespassing because I had “no proof of intent.”

Like burning down the barn, I guess.

When I called Jim that night, he wasn’t 
surprised. “The state police don’t want to get 
mixed up in these turf battles,” he said. “I just 
walk the property with my shotgun, broken open, 
so people know it’s not loaded.”

So that’s what we have been doing lately. And 
maybe it’s luck, but we haven’t had any trespassers.

A shotgun, at close range, can do a lot of 
damage. And fortunately, in Maryland, it’s 
illegal to fire one, even up in the air, to scare someone off your land.

I still don’t want to shoot anything, but I’m 
glad I know how this old shotgun works. In a 
strange way, it connects me to my 
great-grandfather, who may have walked these very same boundaries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/garden/23garden.html?_r=1&ref=garden&oref=slogin

Gene GeRue
http://www.PhoenixRealEstate.bz
Success is a By-Product of Helping Others