Neighborhood Asshatery

I left off with a so-called dead dog still barking and a trespassing jerk.

Just after Thanksgiving, a Sheriff's Deputy shows up looking for Boyfriend, saying he has a complaint that he needs to respond to. The complaint, of course, is from the good pastor neighbor. Boyfriend was at work when the deputy stopped by and he explained to Grandma that Boyfriend would just need to respond in writing or he could go to court if he wished. And that he'd swing by another time.

A couple days later, a Restraining Order shows up. The good pastor had filed the RO against Boyfriend, claiming he's a violent person and had threatened his family.

Say what?

We had a couple of weeks to respond to the temporary RO, and set about getting letters from our landlord. Grandma had written a letter to Adult Protective Services about the situation with the good pastor knowing and willingly trespassing on our property and included a copy of that letter in our response. Boyfriend, of course, wrote a letter. I wrote a letter. Our landlord wrote a letter. A fairly damning one. 

The landlord stated that the pastor has never had permission to be on the property. In the past, the pastor bullied one of the previous tenants to allow him to put his horse in the side pasture and the pastor refused to get a specific insurance policy and he flat-out refused to do so. The landlord then told the tenant he had to have that specific policy. The landlord also stated in his letter that the good pastor had often walked his dogs over to the property we now rent just to defecate on the property. Also on several occasions, the dogs would bark at the landlord while he was on his own property, menacing him and forcing him to stay in his truck (on his own property) until the dogs finally got bored and left.

We discovered the day that the good pastor was informed about the investigation by APS as he forced his dogs to bark the entire night. Like we all could hear the dogs get quiet and then hear them yelp in pain and start barking again. Obviously somebody wasn't happy that APS didn't like him bullying a senior citizen.

Our written responses weren't ready quite fast enough so Boyfriend had to go to court no matter what. He met the good pastor and his whole family there. The commissioner asked the pastor if he still wished to pursue the RO and he said he did. She asked Boyfriend if he still contested the RO and he said yes he did. She looked at the evidence presented by both sides and set a court date for January 15th.

The weekend before this little court date (still in December) we discovered the chain Boyfriend put on our pasture gate to keep people out (*cough*pastor*cough*) was cut and one of our chickens was dead. No other neighbors appear to have been vandalized and we knew who it was. We called the Sheriff's Department and they told us that there was no evidence that the good pastor did anything. And the only thing they could suggest were motion lights and surveillance cameras.

(And we have discovered that something must have happened to one of the dogs because we've recently only been seeing one dog around their house instead of two. However, Boyfriend says he never touched the dog and I believe him. We do get coyotes and mountain lions around these parts and it's very possible and probable that mother nature got to him instead).

Next up: the January court date and the ruling from the commissioner.