[TK421]

I love my neighbors, and my neighbors love me. It's a good combination.

I think my favorite "bad kid" experience was last year when a neighbor and his son came by a few days before Halloween to take a peak. I was working in the front yard when they came up, and his eight year old son started looking around. No big deal, right?

While I'm talking to the dad, the kid starts looking through the graveyard and the tombstones. He gets to one of my crows and tries to take it off the tombstone. Fortunately, the tombstone and crow are both sturdy, so there was no danger of the boy hurting anything, but before I could even say anything, the dad shouted out,

"Mason, don't do that! If you hurt anything, this guy will make you into a prop!"

The kid stopped immediately, and I busted out laughing -- it was great.

 

[TK421]

I did have one potential vandal a few years ago, but he made such a fool of himself it was worth it.

Potential vandal: young teenage boy with no costume out for an evening of mischief hoping to "look cool" for his friends.

That year I had a graveyard with a small faux iron fence (that simple plastic garden fence). Well, one teenager thought it would be "fun" to run into the graveyard. I don't know what his motive was -- if he just wanted to be in the graveyard, or if he was going to try and hurt a tombstone -- but before he could get near the tombstones, he caught his foot on the fence and went face-first into the leaves and mud.

I would have heckled him, but his buddies where doing that for me. To top it all off, I gave them all boxes of raisins when they got to the front door!!

My personal revenge for people not in the spirit.