I lived here for 19 months before the renovated gas station opened in July 2018. It seemed to take people almost that long to understand that my house was OCCUPIED. I suppose a lot of that has to do with not owning a vehicle. No car = not home ?
I had a few incidents where empty bottles were tossed over the fence from the factory parking lot, and once a dead mauled squirrel in a plastic bag was tossed into my yard. I tossed that right back over ! It did not reappear on my side, thankfully.
The used car lot had a very minor amount of debris that worked its way through the chain link fence, like the caps from bottles of motor oil or brake fluid.
Since the convenience store opened I have constantly picked junk food wrappers out of my front yard. Some of these blow into the backyard. The shoddy reno had some sort of plastic material TAPED to the backside of the upright area where a sign could have gone. The wind tore the plastic off and I picked up chunks of the tape even after the plastic was removed, for years.
The area behind the store was made into a blind area of no use, once the back door was bricked over. Disgusting debris piled up, and male customers chronically used this area as a urinal.
As things got weird with the COVID lockdowns, things got stranger in this area. I had numerous incidents of criminal trespass into my backyard. I observed that there were a lot of new comings and goings from that area, where people seemed to be stashing probably stolen things to pick up later. Some people were spending hours picking through that area with a fine tooth comb.
During this time, things were beginning to appear in my backyard, adjacent to that area. I blocked off the short fence with tall plywood, to hamper access to my yard, and to limit visibility.
Starting in 2020, these things were tossed into my backyard:
- glass pipes
- used injection syringes
- bags of used lottery tickets, numerous times. I suspect these were from a local woman, who seems to be in the throes of meth psychosis. She is in the area day and night, usually shouting very loud obscenities at unseen entities as she rages down the street. She was one of the yard trespassers, who had explained to me about the conspiracy with lottery tickets. It was after this encounter that the bags of used lottery tickets began to appear. Was this a gift or an insult ?
- debit cards, numerous. I suspect these were stolen then discarded once they were maxed out or if the tap feature was disabled. Easy to slip under the fence
- credit card in a woman’s name
- a black human hair wig, sort of a short black shag style. It looked brand new so I suspect it had been stolen from the African store a few blocks away
- green suede women’s jacket from 1985 or so. It stunk heavily of smoke and came with a bunch of torn up lottery tickets, recent
- men’s clothing, ON FIRE, which I discovered in the morning, charred
- chunks of wood, stolen from my yard, tossed back into my yard, presumably also on fire as they were heavily charred
- a box of “Diesel Exhaust Fluid” that weighed about 30 lbs was tossed over the fence one morning. I assume it was stolen out of the back of one of the delivery trucks. The plastic jug inside was brand new and unopened. I can’t imagine what the thief thought s/he was going to do with this item, heavy, specific, low value (about $ 25)
Black Picket Fence 