With a Predator next door, I wasn't as careful as I should have been. I had some friends over to have some tea from a set that was over 60 years old. Made in Japan and painted in blue, green, yellow and orange, with a gold background and overall shiny luster. We sat outside, talked and then they left. I went on inside my house and forgot the tea set outside.

Later I came out and found to my shock, the teapot was on the ground broken. "A bird must have landed on the pot and knocked it over," I thought. But as I slowly pieced it together, I saw that there was another reason for its broken state. At the very center of the breaks was a round hole. Inside the pot was a rifle pellet.

It was my neighbor again. He had found the one place in the fence where he could see our place and sitting right there was the teapot. My nine-piece set was ruined because he had found yet another way to harass me.

Personality Disorder Test

Don't take this too seriously, but when I took this test, the conclusions were pretty close to my personality - with a few mild surprises.

Click on the Surprised Test-Taker on the right...

The Predator's Shooting Blind

We have lots of trees around our place and Predator enjoyed making it a game. Either Karl or I would go outside to work - I would work in my wholesale plant nursery - and within 15 minutes, Predator would be outside. He might pretend to work for awhile, but eventually he would pick up his pellet rifle and shoot onto our place from behind one of three blinds he had set up right next to the fence. This was his favorite blind. This was not his biggest rifle. He shot that one late at night or early in the morning. A rifle big enough to kill a deer. Another mode of intimidation and backing up his threat of "when I take you out, I'll use a bigger rifle."

Depression

It can hit slow or fast and comes out of nowhere. I still have bouts of depression, but they are not as deep as they were before I started taking Effexor. When I took Wellbutrin, I was barely okay, but my problem with that was my anger. I was like a walking bomb. Almost anything could set me off and I would go angry-blind. It was truly horrible for my husband. He could do nothing but watch and stand back. Touching me made me worse. So I finally switched to Effexor.

Over the past 4 years, I have found that I feel better than the first year I took it. Several of my major fears are much smaller. I had a horrible fear of heights, bordering on vertigo at times. But now I can climb a ladder up two stories, not without caution, but without that intense fear.

I wish I did not have to take anything at all, but if I have to until my dying day, I will. Without the antidepressant, I am depressed, I look terrible, I don't take care of myself, I dress like a slob. No thanks. Not anymore.

Where would I be now if I had not started taking an antidepressant? Dead. Long ago I would have taken my own life while in a hell-deep depression. I would have missed a lot of good things, plus I would have made the Predator very happy and I do not want to make him happy. I'm stickin' around as long as the body is able.

Courage

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not Knows no release from little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul's dominion?

Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold the resistless day,
And count it fair.

Amelia Earhart

Keep a Journal

If you should encounter a bully who seems to have zeroed in on you, keep a journal. If you don't like to write, get over it. A journal can help eventually, especially if you have other documents, audio or video recordings to back up your writings. When I asked a supportive Deputy D.A. if there was any more we could do, he said we had done everything perfectly. We kept the daily journal, until I was well beyond being sick of it. We videotaped and audiotaped. AND, if you can keep all of that secret from your bully, you will be much better off. As soon as you reveal that you are keeping record, your bully may back off - for awhile - and then will switch to new tactics that you cannot catch on tape. These predators are very experienced. Rare is the person who can out maneuver a predator.

Moral Courage

Few people have the integrity and moral courage to stand up against bullying and harassment. A person targetted by a Predator is quickly abandoned by their friends and colleagues. These same people frequently take one step further by alienating the Target even more by backing the Predator. Even though they may know the Predator is wrong, they fear being the one singled out and work to keep the Predator's gaze upon the Target. A scene of great moral courage and self-serving cowardice.

PLAYFUL PREDATOR

On one of his better days, the Predator - 'under the influence' - plays with sunflower seeds in his pockets. I was sitting on the front porch when he came outside. He kept trying to disgust me so much that maybe I would move away, or better yet, give him our property. Don't laugh. It happens to other targets.

Predators are Cruel

During this past summer, I learned that the Predator has successfully convinced all the neighbors around us that I am a child molester. How he has done this, I do not know, but I know that he is crafty and took lots of photos of my husband and I. He's had several years to find someone who could alter those photos to any perverted purpose. He's had loads of time to tell anyone who will listen about the child molester at 'this address' with 'this phone number.'

Even the neighbors who stood with us have caved in to his poison. We are about as pure as you can get - no illicit drugs, no perversions other than the glass of wine once each week (my stomach can't take more than that), and certainly no perversions of any kind with anyone and especially children. At any moment of my life, I would risk my own to save a child and so would my husband. We do not look at people as 'black', 'brown,' or any other color. We look at them as people and we have conducted our lives in the best way we could without harming any one else.

Yet here we are, the target of a vicious racist, who will stop at nothing to destroy people who simply resist him. You do not have to do anything wrong at all. A predator, a bully, a stalker - they see other people as THINGS they are entitled to. And if they feel rejected by that person or people (our Predator was pissed if we did not wave at him every single day) - they target you and obsessively harass and threaten with the intent to destroy.

Those in the law, need to look closer at this type of crime. They need to be more open to what appears to be a neighbor on neighbor case and consider the possibility of predator and prey.

8 Years Later

2007. Almost Christmas. And the Predator still stalks. He made sure a friend moved into his mother's old house to keep an eye on us. 'Friend' harasses a little, but nothing like Predator. Predator does not tell truth. He dumb bastard. He tells people, he was the victim and we were the predators. And his dumb friends believe him. Predator is an actor and his friends watch too many movies. They love it when he hates us, because it keeps him off their backs. So they encourage him and help him to harass us.

8 years later and he still cannot move on with his life. Dumb bastard.

8 Years Target of A Bully :-(

8 years. 8 trips around the sun. 8 sets of seasons lost in a haze. It's a major trip for him. He told me, "You're the best game in town right now." The first year, we were full of spit and stubborness.

By the fifth year, we were numb from all the calls to the sheriff, appearances in court and finally learning that the Fresno County Superior Court and the Fresno County District Attorney's office thought we were just as guilty as the Predator.

We did not speak to him. We did not communicate with him. We did not even waggle our middle digits at him. But he told stories. He told big whopper stories. I would call him a snake, but I do not want to insult an animal superior to the Predator.

I'll be back.