AIBU to think that if you hate animals you shouldn't move to the countryside?

[shiklah]

I live in a very rural community which has become popular with commuters in the last 5 years. Over the last 18 months the following complaints have featured heavily on the local WhatsApp and Facebook groups:

Cows blocking the road for 10 mins (they do this twice a day and have for hundred of years as they go in for milking)
Escapee sheep roaming the verges and traffic islands
Cockerels crowing
Church Bells

Our neighbours moved in Jan 2016 and have built a conservatory overlooking our field. They have complained:

A ram was tupping ewes in the field
Many Sheep gave birth in the field
A sheep had a prolapsed and was attended by the vet in the field (the vet delivered 2 healthy lambs, revived them and saved the ewe, it was awesome and brilliant and they are all healthy and happy but apparently it spoiled mothers day breakfast)
A fox killed a rabbit and ate it in our field
A ferral cat lives in the hedge at the side of our field
A sheep pooed when Mr Neighbour was eating breakfast

Th least one was reported to me at 7pm this eve when I was getting out of my car at the end of a 60 hour working week. He DROVE to my house to tell me a sheep pooed in his view whilst he was eating breakfast in his conservatory that he built, overlooking my field, that has been their since before my house was built, in 1762. I literally don't know know what to say to these idiots any more. AIBU to simply laugh in their faces and move on with my day

I have had wine and am feeling frazzled

OP originally I was going to suggest you announce your "Crazy Comment of the month award" with background music of Mike Doughty "I hear the bells".

now I'm thinking "size of a cow" would be a better theme song

shiklah One word - Scarecrow.
Do your worst.

We have friends in N Devon who related this story:
A couple who moved into the area, near the coast, wrote to the local paper to complain about the noise of the local Air-Sea rescue helicopters making practice runs at night.

There was such outrage from the locals, and the couple received so much vitriol, both in person and in letters to the paper, that they very soon sold up and left.

Whose Garden?! ….MY Garden!!

This was Walter our neighbours pet sheep when we first moved in. She used to jump the wall out of their garden in the morning, raid the neighbouring gardens throughout the day and then be back home for teatime. Unfortunately after she had been barricaded out of most the nearby gardens she presumably ate something toxic and died. Neighbours have just got a new pet lamb Ginny, she is super cute and I met her properly for the first time this week when she was out for a dog (and lamb) walk.

We also had "Braveheart" living on the verge for a while, he had put up a fight and escaped as they were marking him with blue paint, and had a blue cross painted across his face

I'm crying with laughter at this thread 😂

It reminded me of a news story from a few years ago when this man went on holiday to Ilfracombe and complained about the harbour smelling of fish, even though it was actually a working harbour. He claimed that his children were distressed by seeing crates full of dead fish and crabs. www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/8743065/Tourist-complains-about-sight-of-fish-in-harbour.html

In fact he was still going on about it a few weeks later, and this article says he's from Brighton and actually used to own a fish and chip shop. www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/8783119/Ilfracombe-I-still-think-its-a-dump-says-tourist-put-off-by-fish.html

upstart, something like this?

Yep!

OMG a scarecrow!!!! DH has an old WW2 gas mask somewhere. Or we could use the beekeeping suit and make a HazMat scary ET style figure starring into their conservatory.

Didn't someone on MN have a neighbour that used an inflatable sex doll as an Xmas decoration? Perhaps she'll give me their number, they may loan it me for the summer. Sorry if 'sex doll' is the wrong term, I'm new to all of this.

That news article about Ilfracombe - jesus christ!!

“I was fuming, and the harbour master didn’t do anything to sort the problem out,” he said. “One of the men on the trawlers had tattoos and looked dodgy so it doesn’t surprise me.”

The man complaining is from BRIGHTON - how do these people get their trousers on and get out of the house in the morning??!

Do it, come back, post picks.
Use an old raincoat and a carrot to make a flasher. Dare you. Dare dare double dare you.

how do these people get their trousers on and get out of the house in the morning
goo.gl/images/Y5MDix

I grew up in a village which was mostly residential now, but still had some longstanding working farms.

The residents would constantly complain about the farms. The one closest to us was apparently too noisy, too smelly, too many trucks going back and forward, too many foreign staff. When the farm kindly donated raffle items to the annual fete they were apparently bribery . Some smells would drift across if the wind was blowing your way but it really wasn't offensive.

The farm closed eventually and the land was sold to a developer, and the residents now railed against any house building, saying the village couldn't cope with more residents, whilst simultaneously bemoaning that the local shop might close for lack of custom.

The residents were particularly incensed that the developer was planning to build some affordable housing (not even social housing, affordable housing). After the residents blocked and opposed the developer, the plans for affordable housing were scaled back to the minimum and a series of large "Executive Houses" were built which they struggled to sell and were mostly sold to commuters/ second home owners, so the local shop is unsurprisingly still struggling for lack of custom.

Basically I think the residents just wanted the land to be left empty so as not to intrude on their lives at all, although funnily enough none of them offered to buy it!

People are stupid.

I’m a townie through and through but my grandparents came from a long line of farmers. It amazes me how little people understand about the countryside.

I love a PP idea of counter complaints against you neighbour. Calling him a peeping tom for watching the sheep shagging. Telling him he’s upset the sheep by watching them shit etc etc.

OP, suggest your neighbour joins the parish council - it'll spice up the minutes even more than usual

The time I leaned out a car window and shouted, "This is real life, it's not the fucking Archers!" has gone down into village lore and is breathlessly passed on to newcomers in an undertone, even though a) it was 35 years ago and b) barely anyone in the village lived here when it happened. Did stop local townies from whining about the cows for a while, though

Oh, and you can also get sheep sex dolls. (I know this having made a perfectly innocent mistake - searching for "blow up sheep" for the Nativity play ) Just in case you're pervy sheep-sex obsessed neighbour is in need of a tableaux or something...

People can be such stupid selfish cunts. A huge manure pile as close as possible to their boundary in response to their whinging "complaints" would be immensely satisfying (and I am townie born and bred, but have more than one brain cell and do not expect the entire world to revolve around me).
Am also a dog owner who often holidays in the countryside with my dog, and would no more walk him through a field of livestock off lead than I would walk into someone elses house and shit on their carpet.

No excuses for these bastards. Such a pity that you are not allowed to shoot the owners as well as their dogs.

OMG
www.amazon.com/Naughty-Inflatable-Sheep-Backdoor-Pleasure/dp/B00N39DJO4?th=1&tag=mumsnetforum-21

I have led a sheltered life.

BACK DOOR PLEASURE HOLE!!!!!!!!!!! I am def tethering a dozen of these in the field

Some friends of a friend of ours begged to stay at our holiday cottage. We only usually let family and a couple of very good friends stay.
It's fairly close to a farm.
They went home early because:

1. They counted the tractor going past 15 times
2. They heard owls screeching at night which scared her.
3. Foxes rummaged in the rubbish bag they left outside full of chicken carcass which they forgot to put in our bin and left a mess. No shit!

FFS anyone else we don't know asks we just say it's busy, which it usually is.

I'm feeling virtuous now because although I'm a townie, I have lived in a rural hamlet for 11 years now. The farmer 2 houses along is brilliant. If he is waiting to bring his cows across the lane, he always lets us pass first. When the lane was shut for roadworks, he let us drive through his yard, saving a 5 mile detour. When it snowed, he knocked on the door to see if we needed any milk or veg and said he would be happy to send one of his lads off in the tractor if we needed anything else. He also flails our hedge for us as our garden is much higher than the lane it adjoins.

In return for all this, we give him a bottle of wine or some home-made cider as he won't let us pay him and always feel bad that he does more for us than we do for him. He says that living near people who let him get on with his job is key and the odd hour here or there once a year is worth it. But new neighbours have bought a converted barn as their 2nd home and are like the OP's neighbours... I'll pass on some of the ideas in this thread!

I dare you, OP

We’re fairly rural, on the coast.

We get moaning about fog horns, the coast guard helicopter and the smell of fish as well.

There was someone moaning on Facebook the other night about a farmer cutting grass at 10pm and keeping her kids awake - these moans only ever go one way, you might have a bit of a private whinge to your partner, but you’ve got to be a spectacular kind of stupid to publically post it on a community group.

Although, secretly, a tiny part of me does see the side of the church bells through the night moaners. I don’t really see why they need to chime at 1, 2, 3 etc am but they always have done and we’re used to them so I keep it zipped

Someone once put a pic of a ram wearing a tupping harness on the local Facebook asking why a cruel farmer is making a sheep wear a torture device snd that the Sheep was clearly in pain and near the end of its life. They'd called the rspca!!

The farmer retorted that that Sheep was his prize ram and he wasn't being tortured, he was wearing his harness and my fav was the line 'he's not in pain or nearly dead, he's knackered from doing his job'

Knackered from doing his job!! 🤣

I am not clicking on that link!!!!!

Please someone start up a Facebook page and link it on here

Ridiculous really. If they'd complained about the sheep pooing to me I'd have just said, "Yeah, they do that", and just stared at them till they got back in their car.

We have stupid idiots who move into our village and complain about the church bells. Church has been there since the 13th century so hardly a surprise!