He knew it was me.

This was Central Florida, the lawns were St Augustine grass that with lot of water, mulching and fertilizer, they grew a couple inches a week, and the leaves are wide and tough unlike the soft lawns up north.

My neighbor disliked me because I built a 2 story house and that blocked the view of the lake. We worked for the same company and he was upset that I was hired in at a management level although he didn’t work for me.

Our lawns were about a 1/3 acre, so a Saturday cut and trim would easily take 3 hours with a normal lawn mower.

He bought a basic riding lawnmower, and he would drive his mower on my property, up to 5′ before making a U Turn. That was OK, except he would make the hard turn on top of my sprinklers. Almost every week, I had to replace the broken PVC pipe, digging up my lawn. I tried several things to dissuade him, but in the end on a Friday night, I brought home about 20′ of a high strength braided steel cabling. It was the smallest diameter I could find. I uncoiled it surrounding the sprinkler heads pushing down into the tall grass so you would never see it. But you would hear it, and I was in my garage when I knew he ran over it. The racket it made was frightening.

Even a 25″ blade on a 10 HP motor couldn’t cut it. But it did wrap it around the shaft and stalled the motor. All 20 feet of the cable was gone from my yard.

He had to push his mower to the garage, and spent the rest of the day disassembling his mower to untangle the mess.

That was the last time he went on my lawn.