Neighbor comes up with a brilliant plan to prevent teen boy from ruining their front lawn

People often come up with quirky plans to teach those who are bothering them a lesson. Sometimes, these acts can be humorously petty. Reddit user u/Auroraah recently shared a clever plan to stop a teenage boy from ruining their front lawn. The boy had been intentionally damaging the grass, so they decided it was time to take action.

"We live in the end house on our street which has a slight curve. For almost the last year, I’ve noticed that twice a day (on the way to and from school), the same teenager cuts across our front lawn. I asked him to stop ages ago, but he has not. It’s beginning to leave a noticeable path of thinned-out grass from being walked on excessively. The kids went back to school yesterday after the summer and I noticed him do it again in the morning," the neighbor shared.

They decided that rather than confronting him again, they would just teach the schoolboy a lesson he would remember. The person noticed how the teenager was always fashionably dressed so they got the idea to target his fashionable accessories. "You see, said teenager is very much into their fashion, they always have really expensive clothes and, more importantly, trainers on," the post read.

"One section of his chosen route we have been planning a flower bed. I decided, 'Today is that day!' I dug out the section and put down the new loose compost which included manure of course. I then left my hosepipe squirting water on this patch for a few hours to suitably moisten the soil. To finish off, a scattering of grass clippings on the top!" the neighbor added. Predictably, the boy appeared once again as usual, ready to stomp across the yard but instead, he found himself ankle-deep in wet mud and manure. 

The narrator couldn't help himself and started laughing at the turn of events. "I was laughing so hard and had to compose myself before walking out and profusely apologizing to him while holding two plants to put into my new flower bed!" they concluded the story. The Reddit community couldn't hold back their laughter either, as the boy got a lesson about not cutting through the lawn of other people without their permission. A bunch of the users left hilarious comments.

u/Tweedbreak shared a similar experience and wrote: "Years ago, my dad had a similar problem, he asked nicely. Asked a few times. Finally, he took out his camera and he is a retired photographer, so it is one of those big cameras. He started pretending to take pictures. There was no film in the camera. The kids asked what he was doing, he looked at them and said he was collecting evidence. The kids never came back."

u/Vanawesomeness wrote: "This was the issue with my parents' corner lot, except people would drive over the low-sloping curve and cut across the lawn once a year. Mom's new rock garden that ripped out a kid's oil pan stopped that." u/BonnyBaby715 commented: "Sometimes you have to step in a mess before you learn your lesson." 

Editor's note: This article was originally published on September 8, 2023. It has since been updated.