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

Well clearly after the fox complaints it would only be sensible to get in to pest control. Rifle fire at 2am really adds to the atmosphere.

Then of course you need to control crows and pigeons. Pigeon flights are morning and evening and are the perfect accompaniment to breakfast and dinner. Plus points for breasting the birds in view of the conservatory. It's obviously efficient to have a few blinds set up and double gun them.

I'd like to nominate this thread for Classics.

When I moved into our village, a goat tried to mug me when I was on the way home from the village shop. Fortunately a Joe Grundyish old boy was passing and reckoned he knew where she came from and led it away. I felt I'd had a very good welcome to the village and wouldn't have dreamed of complaining!

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 blush) Just in case you're pervy sheep-sex obsessed neighbour is in need of a tableaux or something...

Oh please, OP, you have to do this - Mr Scarecrow shagging a sheep with his carrotcock and satsuma balls! Pleeeeaaase - and post a pic.

Don't forget if you are using anything inflatable you could fill them with helium and tether them at various heights. If you painted them with glow in the dark paint it would be even more effective.

@Brigante9 I think your horse is dead mate.

More great suggestions.

Pest control wardens have the BEST stories of idiots at large. The mole man can hold court for hours. He was once asked to remove moles from a garden in Hebden Bridge (hippy capital of Yorkshire) and was amazed to be asked by the woman who'd engaged his services what he intended to do with the moles, where they would be rehomed. He realised she didn't want the traditional counting method of pinning them to the fence by the nose (£20 for your first mole, £3 a mole after that) and told her as a special favour to her he would make sure he buried them where no one else would ever find them. he just didn't tell her he'd kill them first. Another time he was asked to remove rats from a Steiner School where they wanted him to release them safely in the countryside - he told them it was illegal and they sent him away and wrote to the council and their MP!! About a RAT!!!

I'd love to see the replies the school got!

Someone once gave me an inflatable sheep sex doll in a nightclub. It had printed fishnets, suspenders and red lipstick.

The decorated Christmas sex doll was on the side of someone’s neighbour’s house iirc.

Re the ‘dead’ horses- in my defence, the policeman who came out and phoned the owner also thought they were dead!

@Brigante9 clearly pinin' for the fjords.

If they don't like sheep tupping then what a couple of donkeys get up to may traumatise you neighbours OP.

I pulled a snail out of a plant pot that that I planned to wash and reuse, and found it attached to another snail by a very dubious (and comparatively huge) looking member...

Who should I complain to?

A single donkey can be startling enough. We were once eating a picnic on a bench halfway up a small Lake District hill when Mr Donkey decided to parade just across the fence proving he was hung like a horse. Not peeing, just showing off at length. Maybe it was a cunning plan to try put us off our grub so we'd share with him, but it didn't work on us ...probably would do the trick nicely on the OP's neighbours' delicate sensibilities.

shiklah

Wow you have one busy field, your list doesn't even include all the things that happen when your neighbours aren't creepily staring into your field.

I'd drive over to complain that they're staring at your field!

They sound moronic.
Start a village magazine and educate them in a subtle way.

Shik the pest people are fairly fucked up though. We have two lads in their twenties here who do it as a hobby, without payment. Ie. Their idea of a fun afternoon is despatching various animals, in medieval ways, who've had the misfortune to have their homes noticed by humans.
Just because you live (or in my case, grew up and live) in the countryside, doesn't mean you're insensitive to cruelty to animals. Does mean you can handle the smell/poop/muddy realities though, OP.

This is exactly why I avoid the countryside, it’s absolute madness! All that tipping and shitting..... intolerable . Then there’s the vast amounts of unnecessary green stuff 🤢makes me positively bilious!

My old pony used to upset people by stopping outside a posh restaurant in the village, refusing to move and just letting it all hang out. He must have had nice day dreams as it could swing in all directions. The worat was the restaurant had huge picture windows with all diners facing him. He would refuse to move. Your neighbour should think himself lucky 🤔😣

God I love this thread. It's the only one I've ever considered sharing because it rings so true.

I've not heard anyone as barmy as OP's neighbor though tbf.

It was ever thus though. Back in the 80's my dad was driving a combine harvester one morning and had a DFL actually run up to the machine flapping his arms complaining it was a Sunday!

Aw it’s just like a Beatrix Potter story isn’t it? 😄

I do understand how difficult it must be to deal with townies who don't understand animal behaviour, however a few years ago DH and I were on holiday in a cottage next to a field where horses were kept, on our first day we went past the field and one of the horses was lying down making a groaning sound, I was really worried about it, so I stopped by the farm and reported it, the farmer was quite terse with me and I felt silly and embarrassed, I apologised for wasting his time but the horse was groaning so I thought it was hurt, it spoilt my day actually thinking I had been a prize prat and the farmer would be laughing at my silliness.

5 minutes after we returned to the cottage, the farmer and his wife came round, the wife burst into tears and just hugged me, seems like the horse was actually very ill, seems my mention of groaning made the farmer take a look at it immediately

We had a brilliant holiday after that, we were invited to tea the next da with the family , we got free drinks in the pub (the publican was the farmers brother) and best of all when it was realised we don't drive and were reliant on the bus for days out the farmers son took us to town one day going the scenic route that the bus didn't take, so we saw sights we would never have seen

We haven't gone back but we still exchange Christmas cards with the family (and the horse made a complete recovery I am glad to say)

That’s a lovely story Oldsu! I was walking with mates once when we came upon a sheep 🐑 on its back ,legs in the air and eyes rolling. We thought it was fitting or something, very upset. Found the farmer who looked at us in a pitying way, tipped the sheep right way up and wandered off muttering “bloody townies” 😂

I thought countryside folk hated animals, judging by the barbaric way they treat them?

Mythical, take a hike, through a field of cowpats.

I have a confession. I bought someone the inflatable sheep, and yes it does have red lipstick.

The person I bought it for was a student, it would randomly turn up in student beds, it was also carried around under someone's arm for a while, the carrier pretended he hadn't noticed the blow up sheep.

Come to think of it the size of it, well it was a blowup lamb really which is quite disturbing.

Not sure if it was linked to upthread.

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

I keep reading this and thinking about the rural schools thread. Mr neighbour could do with going back to (a rural) school.

I went to a rural school for a year. I was the chicken monitor.

You: I think they should do that at urban schools, then maybe townies wouldn't grow up with such silly ideas.

I have a friend who refused to eat free range eggs in case they had baby chickens in them. I had to explain that to get baby chickens, a cockerel was required. She used to be a nurse, too - a gynae nurse at that.