What I Hate Most About You - By Anonymous

[hatrack]

Dear new neighbors,

I've never met any of you. If I did, I would be perfectly polite. Probably I'd even think you're nice folks. But here's what I hate about you. For a hundred years and more, this was remote ranch country with widely scattered houses out of sight of one another. All it took to change that was one land sale: a developer looking to make a buck and some people who wanted to live in the country. Within a few days, a new road was bulldozed, some flat places were scraped out, and your new houses were hauled in and plopped down. You do realize you have destroyed the very thing you paid so much for, don't you? This isn't ranch country anymore. Now, it's a subdivision.

I hate how you've chosen to place your houses right along the crest of a hill. You have a great view up there, but have you considered winter's blizzards? Summer's lightning? Have you thought of how you dominate the landscape? I doubt I'm the only one annoyed, because your houses are visi-ble for miles in all directions. But I take it personally. No matter that you're some distance away, you peer down into my ranch yard like a peeping Tom.

I hate to think of how much water you'll be pumping for your newly laid sod and your non-native trees. I hate to think of all those septic systems scattered above the water table being filled by people used to a city sewer system where you flush it and forget it. How can that many new house-holds not affect our ground water?

EDIT


While we're on the topic of livestock, I'd like you to remember that you're the ones who wanted to move to the country. So don't complain about the noise and the smell. Fences keep livestock from wandering onto your manicured lawns, so don't tear out sections of fence and then whine about animals in your yard. I'm still holding out hope that you'll keep up the fence on your place, because fences are good things when you have dogs. You do still have dogs, don't you? A ranch neighbor told me he's given up trying to track down the owners anymore. "Shoot, shovel, and shut up" is his new motto. Now, I'm not going to shoot your dog. I don't even shoot the coyotes around here. But I'm really starting to hate that tomcat who is attacking my chickens."

EDIT

http://www.tidepool.org/original_content.cfm?articleid=128975

[MuseRider]

1. Me too, I am so sorry.

We have lived here for almost 20 years. The last place we were got socked in with houses. This place was wonderful, tons of wildlife but now the woods are gone, the pasture is gone and the house directly behind me is 4 stories and about 10,000 square feet. They took the ponds that were where I used to ride my horses and made them into cement ponds with fountains. They shot the deer from their bulldozers and put up 6 bronze deer statues next to the entrance that will soon be gated. Our move to our farm can't come any too soon. 40 houses have gone up between my house and the farm, 40 houses on 3 acre plots over 10 miles that used to be pastures. One section of property that boarders one of my pastures was just sold for housing so I don't know how long it will stay country either. I have already had problems with one new neighbor out there. She carries a parasol(the sun is dangerous), won't let her kids play outside because of wasps(?) and wild animals. Well you move to the country and are afraid of it while it still is country, how much sense does that make? PS, watch your livestock. My new neighbor thought it was a great idea to dispose of her food wastes by feeding them to my horses. Colic in horses is not a good thing. Sheesh, I feel for you, good luck.

Edit Sorry, I thought you were dealing with this. My mistake, still it is a letter everyone of us country folks would like to write.

[hatrack]

2. No, providentially I'm not in your or the author's situation

But I can understand how you feel.

I particularly like the bit about shooting the deer from bulldozers and then putting up deer statues. How typically American - it made me think of the big statue of a buffalo on Constitution Avenue in Washington DC.

[MuseRider]

4. It was horrible.

We had a huge herd(?) of deer. I would feed them and the coyotes in the winter. Some we knew by sight. When the shooting started they would start running madly through the back of the property until there were no more to run. Coyotes are still around but very few. No more bobcats. Quail are gone and we are overrun with turkeys. This used to be a fly by and during migration I could log many species but now I am lucky to see a bird or two a day. It is so very sad. BTW, there are quite a few people raising buffalo around here. Most are used like cattle but still, it is nice to see a herd now and then. Thanks for posting this, it is a very strange thing. I can't blame people wanting to move out here, I did. I just want to know why they want to move out here and change it into what they moved away from and why are they so afraid of anything different?

[phantom power]

3. Some people want the "Disney" version of everything

[MuseRider]

5. Funny thing, that.

"I live in the country." My gated community of $1,000,000.00 homes is "in the country". Yes, you are country folk living in what used to be farm land.

[phantom power]

6. A story about kayaking

In a previous life, I was a whitewater kayaker. As with any sport involving Chaotic Forces of Nature, every year a few people get themselves killed doing it, and there are certain rapids that tend to kill more than their fair share of boaters. Crack-in-the-Rock on the Chatooga. Dimple Rock on the Lower Yough. Quartzite falls on the Upper Salt (which some vigilante actually dynamited).

And every year, there is the contingent of people who want to dynamite out those extra-dangerous rapids. It is a never-ending battle to protect these rivers from people who want to make them "safe".

The concept of accepting risk, and what the adjective "risky" actually implies, appears to be lost on more and more people.

The idea that there is beauty in unaltered nature, and that preseving it is *worth* living with some risk, especially since that risk is all essentially voluntary, must also be lost on people. Even though there are hundreds of theme-parks in this country, where people can go to enjoy low-risk excitement, these people feel the need to seek out and destroy the natural places we have left, and ruin them for others.

[MuseRider]

7. Sad

This is so very sad. The natural world is a thing of beauty and there are some things of beauty that are also risky, like you said. If you are uncomfortable then you avoid those things. I don't understand putting yourself in a position of risk then altering the environment to change that risk when there are so many places you can be and not be at risk. I am a diver. I have done some risky diving. At this point in my life I no longer see the need to do that. I am content and still amazed by "bathtub" diving. It is a choice and the choice you describe makes no sense to me. It kind of reminds me of what I am hearing from some (only some I am in no way saying anything bad about living in Florida) Floridians. You live there, did you expect this not to ever happen? I live in tornado alley, if I get wiped out then that was the risk I accepted when I chose to stay here. I find every year I understand this society less and less.

[Boomer]

8. Okay, I can hate everyone too

I hate that you moved onto land that once belonged to native Americans and destroyed their way of life with your farm or ranch, and now you complain that someone new is moving in and destroying your way of life. What goes around, comes around.

I hate that you've had children and grandchildren and are now complaining that there are too many people living near you. Guess what, they are the children and grandchildren of someone else who cared more about their family than the state of the world.

[brokensymmetry]

9. Then you should really like me.

No kids. Not now. Not ever. B-)

[Boomer]

10. None here either

Although it doesn't make up for the rest of my extended family -- they breed often and early. Just what the world needs: more poor red-neck fundies living in trailers and voting for Bush.

[snowFLAKE]

11. Gee, That sucks

Guess you now know how the "Native Americans" felt when you (or your Great Grandfather) staked out Your Ranch.

Or how the the Kennewick Man/Captain Picard



Felt when the "Native Americans" moved in.

Of course, thanks to the tireless work of Mr. Mulder and Ms. Scully on the X-files, we all now know that the Final Alien Invasion will occur on
December 22, 2012 and those assholes who spoiled your view will have their come-uppance from these guys:



Yeah, it seems like A Long Time right now, but It's only a Kerry Administration away.