What have you found on your property that shouldn't have been there?

[Texas Ranger]

Not on my property, but over the years, three bodies, bunch of stolen stuff, pot plants, one nekkid female I kept under observation to see if she was in danger, knives, arrows, axes, files, a 6 foot wide canvas carrier from a helicopter, one hot mosquito day a can of OFF, and sundry other stuff.

Un, the female had a couple of large dogs with her, one alerted and I left.  Being a southern gentleman, and all.  Never had the chance to tell her about the alligators in the creek. ;D

[PineNut]

Found some burned tires.  Couple of days later, more burned tires. Two or three days later, more burned tires. A couple of days later found tires burning and lowlife burning them. Had six deputies with me. Some of them wore bracelets when they left. The other ones (who managed to dump their drugs) were out there at 2 AM cleaning up the mess. Hate to have to stay up so late at night but it was worth it. No problems since then. The word got around.

[asy]

3 bottles of nitroglycerine

Did you find out where it was from? What was the story???

Found a mountain lion once. According to the State of Kansas, it wasnt supposed to be there.

How far away was it "supposed" to be?

Someone, apparently, needs to issue decent maps to the mountain lions around there...  :

three bodies,

REALLY?!  Story??? What was going on? Were they all at the same time???  Inquiring minds want to know...

Found some burned tires. 

I don't understand...  Why would anyone wander around burning tyres? I mean, OK, once, being idiots, but to keep coming BACK??  What for???

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We haven't really found anything untoward, bits of fencing wire, old fence posts and such, but nothing interesting.

The area our farm is apparently has problems with Marcel's plant varieties, but we haven't found them on our place yet, thankfully.

We have found PEOPLE on there, though...  They seem to be a universal problem :(

One particularly 'impressive' lot, driving down our driveway, to go have a swim in our lagoon, seemingly. When asked what they were doing, they told us to "mind our own business". When pressed further, they said they were going to "Swim in the lagoon, it was public water, in the National Park, and we should "butt out".

Not entirely sure how Andrew managed to keep his cool, but, he asked them whether they'd driven through a gate about a Km back. They said they 'thought so'. He asked whether they had noticed the "PRIVATE PROPERTY" sign on the gate, They said they hadn't. He suggested they drove back and read that sign on their WAY OUT OF OUR FARM.

They insisted it was part of the National Park (next door) and they were going for a swim.

Andrew insisted they weren't, and they needed to leave...   NOW...

He's a big guy. They were stupid. But they left. Quickly. After they realised it was best for their health...

We're more careful about shutting the gate, even when we're home, now...  Morons...   >:(

asy :D

[zopi]

It seems that there is a provision to the deed to our place that authorizes the owner to shoot tresspassers....it predates the civil war..

I don't think I would care to try that out in court though.

[beenthere]

Someone, apparently, needs to issue decent maps to the mountain lions around there... 

Our mountain lions don't read decent maps, but don't know about non-decent ones.   ;D ;D

[LeeB]

Asy,
the nitro was left by the previous owner. He did excavation and dirt work for a living. I never did hear the outcome of it all.

[Tom]

Our mountain lions don't read decent maps.............

I got it!    :D

[isawlogs]

 I live close to the border , the crossing is only a few kilometers away . The road we live on also ends at our laneway , there is a place to turn at the end of the road but most people drive on up and are stunned to find themselves in our yard  :  There are two signs on your way in here , one when you get on the road and another as you pass the bridge that tell you you are on a cul de sac ( dead end )
When horse and buggy where a common transportation ,  a few years back  : there was a road that continued on along the river , there was a bridge the crossed it just below the house , the road snaked along the river on my side to the next little township ....  Now , its been a few years since the horse and buggy have been replaced , the road is all grown over , is part of my pasture and the bridge long gone before I ever was born ...  Ya'd think that upon coming onto the dirt road that leads to our house one would think he might not be on the correct road goingt o the border    Let alone driving through my electric fence  >:(  continuing on the grass and stopping only when he gets to a pile of rocks we have to make another flower bed ..... Getting out of his car and wundering out loud where the dam road went to ....  :  
 Thats one fellar that should of bought a lotery ticket that day .... His luck would have it that I was not home that evening  >:( >:(  He got upset cause he was on his way back to the border and that he was sure that this is the way he came across    My wife had to help him back his car out , show him where he was , and explane to him how to get to the border  .... He left with out even offering to replace the electric fence he took out or an other type of thank-you ... boy is he a lucky man ......  :
  My wife works with the older generation , and she has a special way with them , they feel comfortable around her and are quick to have faith in her. He being of that generation , she took pity and helped him out and sent him on his way .....

  I was thinking that maybe something must of clicked in his head .. first the dirt road , then the electric fence , the grass ... the rocks .... I would of sent him back ... but not driving his car . He would of been passenger and car on tow truck .

  So ya we get the odd lost soul once in a while .

[rpg52]

I found a cyclone-type separator that sorts flour or feed blown from a mill.  It had a two way door for filling sacks.  No idea how it got here, but must have come from the barn that burned down before I moved here.  An oak tree fell on it and smashed it.

Have a section of road built in the 1860's that led from near-by town to a mining site about 5 miles away.  It was severed near the town by miners who excavated a 30' ravine through the road bed.  Back then they scraped up soil to make the road bed, no dozers then and they couldn't build a side-cast road like they do now.  Scalped several acres to do it, it only grows brush now.  Lots of old roadside trash (broken bottles, etc.) buried along the road that shows up when I cultivate.   Found a very old shovel, made of 3 pieces of steel riveted together too.

Lots of tires, barb wire and assorted other junk.  Also quite a few Native American mortars and hand grinding stones for all the local acorns - but maybe this stuff SHOULD be here, who am I to say.  I'm leaving lots of buried pvc pipe for future generations, cleaning up lots more junk that was left by previous occupiers.   'Course, if I croak before finishing my sawmill, it will make some interesting junk someday too!
Ray

[Justin L]

Found a tree stand several years ago in my Dads woods, padlocked & cabled to the tree. He never allowed anyone to hunt there. I twisted the cable till it broke then drug the stand 1/2 mile to the house & told him about it. It was my sisters father-in-laws stand! Bought a new cable, drug it 1/2 mile back to the tree & put it up. I wish I could have seen his face when he found the new cable beside the old one!

[RichlandSawyer]

Several years ago i had a car pull into the field entrance late at night so i walked down there and found two teenagers making out. Scared the begeeses out of them. A week later early on a sunday morning i thought i heard a truck stop in the same area looked out the window and didnt see anything several hours later discovered i had been robbed of a couple truck loads of oak firewood. What kinda people steal a fellars firewood, just aint right i tell ya!!! So a couple weeks after that when i heard a truck stop down there after dark i sneaked real careful in the dark. I could only see the outline of a pickup, wasnt sure if i was gonna find kids making out or firewood thieves, I crept slowly up to the truck turned on my flashlight and yelled!!! And what i found was a DNR officer who lucky for me was so shookup he couldnt get his gun out of the holster. Apparently he had been following a couple pochers. I told him my story we had a good chuckle and he headed off to the closest gas station to clean his shorts.

Used to have a giant black lab and when i say giant i mean ENORMOUSLY HUGE. Never saw him get more than a couple hundred yards from the house but he always managed to find amazing stuff. Frying pan, twelve pack of beer, igloo cooler, clump of dirt twice the size of a basket ball that smelled like hog manure, a 4'x8' utility trailer (he was pulling it by the safety chains) and one afternoon he came to the door and was meowing he opened his mouth and out came a kitten in perfect health just really wet. Other than the trailer i have no idea were this stuff came from.

[limbrat]

KUDZU

Norm i have one kitten left, if you wont it i will send a bottle with it.

[Norm]

 :D :D

Limbrat I thought of your story when we found these little guys. Fortunately for us they were a bit older than the ones you adopted so they are not quite so hard to nurse. One of them is still pretty weak but the other two look like they'll make it.

Anybody need a new kitten for their place?

[Don_Papenburg]

Richland ,  That story is funny  reminds me of a friend I have in Munnising ,  He lives on a deadend road  . Has trees sorounding his property.  He also had mailbox malfunctions . So one night he and his dog sat in the dark of the trees so the mail box could not see them . He waited for a while  then he heard tires spitting gravel slowly as a car came to a stop by his mail box .  Being a warm night the car windows were down and he could see inside ,two young fellows .  He reached in the window and grabed the driver by the neck juast as the dog started to bark and growl . The young fellow screamed bloody murder .  and he asked them politely to leave his property. after he found out it was a neibour kid who had comendered some of his dads beer and was just a little thirsty.  The other one was one he worked with on occasion . Well the next time he saw the other one He said that the driver acualy soiled his BVDs

[Handy Andy]

  I found one of them mountain lions that aren't supposed to be in Kansas too.  Also found a calf that had been eaten fresh from its backside. Hollowed out like deer I have found also in that condition.  Coyotes like their meat aged.  Like smelling rank.  So I know it wasn't any coyote.  Guess the state had to change their mind after they found a guy who had killed and skinned one of the things.  Heard they were thinking about prosacuting (spelling?) him. 

[Toolman]

Two copperheads last August. One next to back door, 2 weeks later one coiled up next to slab wood pile. Previous encounter was about 10 yrs. ago. They were'nt invited, so they should'nt have been there.   May they R.I.P.  ;D  ;D

[TeaW]

"coyotes like their meat aged" Handy Andy. They will eat carion but they preffer to kill their own. They are hunters and love to hunt and kill.

[Texas Ranger]

We were on fire watch back in the '70's when we got an early morning fire call to the community of Rockland, an area of east Texas well known for its outlaw loggers, and woods burning, so nothing new to us, we gear up and go.  The community is about 15 miles north of where we were stationed in Woodville, Texas, typical small east Texas town.  We show up, early in the morning, to a low hanging fog that you could see maybe 100 years down the road.  Mixed in was a small amount of drift smoke.

Now, if you have low hanging fog, that means the humidity is in saturation, and we should not have a fire, but stranger things then that have happened in Rockland.  To be on the safe side, we called our local Texas Ranger to come up as enforcement in case this was a set trap for "them *DanG fire fighters".

In this part of Texas, back then, the woods were burned regularly.  To open it for hunting, to kill bugs, to kill snakes, or just to watch the hill burn.  Rockland was know to be anti forest service, so caution was called for.

Since we could not see the fire, nor much at all, we all broke out the handy talkies and took different directions to see if we could locate anything.  I choose a woods road that meander over the hill and through the woods (want to say to grandmothers house, but hey).  I had gone maybe a quarter mile when I heard a dog bark.  This is back in the God awfuls of east Texas, open hunting, so figured some one was out getting early morning dinner, and could be a source of information.

Walking down the road, I saw a figure just through the fog, sitting on the embankment on the side of the woods road, along side sat his dog, obviously alerted and watching me.  Typical fiest dog locals use to hunt small game.  The figure was sort of leaning on his gun, head down, like he was dozing.  As I got closer the scene changed to one a little more strange, so I called the Ranger to come up, and approached, cautiously.

It was an elderly gent, maybe my age now, maybe older in his '70's.  And he was indeed slumped over, with the shotgun barrel passing through his mouth and out the back of his skull.  He had committed suicide with his favorite dog as witness.  The dog sat beside his master and more or less moaned, a sound I care not to hear again.  The Ranger came up and called for the sheriff and a meat wagon.  They showed up, in due time, and the Ranger began the crime scene investigation, with other law men as witness's.

Turned out the old gents wife had died some time earlier, and he had been at lose ends, found he had cancer, and decided to take the last hunt.  We were all surprised that he had not killed the dog, but those old nesters valued a good dog.  We talked with neighbors, and found no relatives locally, eventually one neighbor came up with a sons name.  And he was notified of the situation.

The son had no interest in the old man, alive or dead, and declared such.  The local JP ended up appointing me, I thought as punishment for getting the whole thing started, to handle the estate.  The old man only real worldly goods was a small travel trailer, a shack, and not much else.  We sold the old gents goods and got enough for a paupers grave.

The Ranger took the old mans dog, and he like to have pined away before his new family could get him interested in life.  Ranger said latter that he turned out to be a faithful companion on hunting trips.

The sight of the old man sitting on the road, dog beside him, was a hard one for me to let go of, I guess he died with the only friend in the world to him, which is about as sad as it gets.   That was the first of three bodies I found while in the forest service.

[Tom]

How sad that we as a society can allow an individual to degenerate into that state.  It seems that someone, somewhere would have cared, doesn't it?   You can't always stop suicide, but sometimes you can, and all it takes is a little acknowledgement of someones existence.  It's too bad the dog didn't know what was getting ready to happen.  He would have probably tried to stop it. 

[WildDog]

Richland I got a laugh out of your dogs gathering habits, we have a young Labrador that surprises us every morning with trophies found during the night.

Found a weather balloon out the back once.

Not much else...... We have 3 Tourist places on one boundary that offer saphire fossicking, fishing and horse riding. One of these was a nudist camp untill this year when they realised Glen Innes is too cold for any more than 3 mths a year. Our access is through the nudists, we sort of got used to pink bodies walking around. One day I was spraying blackberries on the creek and heard "Boom" Boom" along a bit further on my land was a bloke with a shotgun hunting rabbits wearing  only sand shoes and a shoulder bag ??? I didn't approach him, it would be just my luck my wife would have come along, would have taken a bit of explaining.

We get a lot of tourists that don't realise they have crossed onto our place usually foreigners. I have found some really nice naive trespassers and struck up some good conversations. One exception was 2 guys that initialy failed to comply with my request to move on, they were digging around the pylons in the creek of our private bridge, they wern't nice.

Last year our neighbour who runs an outfit  "Pub Crawls on Horseback" rang up early evening saying a woman and her 10yr old son were  missing possibly on our place, we went out with spotlights but couldn't find them, they were found before lunch the next day. We run livestock guardian dogs with my livestock and like to socialise them in case a tourist wanders in.

[jim king]

About 20 acres of cocaine.  This is a photo of a nursery with enough plants for another 240 acres.

[beenthere]

Jim
Why do you have it on your property?  Is it wanted or not wanted?   ??? : :

[Toolman]

Texas Ranger,


My wife just read your post. She walked away with a tear in her eye. I have to admit, I was a little misty myself. A real sad story. It was a good thing you did at the end, something you should be proud of. Other then his dog, I guess the the old guy did have someone else who cared.  God Bless You!!

[Bro. Noble]

I found a couple of Game Wardens one time >:(

[DR Buck]

We live on a long country road with out many houses.   Our house sits almost half a mile in from the road and there is a hump up over the railroad right out at the road end. The whole place is out-of-site from the road. (That's why we call it Hidden Acres)  At night our driveway becomes one of the "local dump sites"   We've gotten up to go to work in the morning to find piles of tree prunings, tires, an old engine block, car stereos and even a washing machine.   Doesn't happen much anymore after I snuck up on a couple guys dumping trash one night.  Hit them with a spot light and winged a few rounds in the air.  I think they hit 140 mph before they had the doors closed.  ;D

One night the wife and I were out and turned in the drive.  Just as we crested the railroad we caught a couple of teenagers practicing something they must have learned in health class.  :D ;D :D   Right there in the full brightness of the high beams!   I got out of the car and just walked up to their window and asked them if they needed any help as they seemed to be lost on private property.   They were so scared all they could manage was some mumbling that I think was "we're sorry, we didn't know".     I told them that I was going to drive up to the house and get my big truck and come back down and if they were still there I was going to block them in and make a phone call.   We were barley 100 feet past them when they hit the road at about 60......still naked.!

Other less exciting, but still interesting are civil war relics.   Our property lies along the old civil war era Orange & Alexandria Railroad and it was also a winter encampment for the union army just north of the Rappahanock River.   We find lots of bullets, some buttons and other camp artifacts.   The most common thing is old railroad spikes.  Seems back then all the trees had been cut down and railroad spikes were used for tent pegs.   I dig them up in groups of 2 to 6 some as far as 1/2 mile from where the rails were located.   By far the most interesting relic I've found is an old iron signal canon.   It's about 14" long and has a 1" bore.   I almost left it in the ground when the metal detector indicated iron.  I was sure it was just more spikes and I was tired of digging them.   But I dug anyway, and I'm glad I did.