When is "snitching" not "stealing"?
 

A property owner behind us (owns 110 acres / two houses / two barns / pond, etc.) is only on their property about 6 weekends per year. They bought it about 6 years ago, let it run down, apples trees in disrepair, Wild Boar tore up organic gardens, .......just a sad sad mess.......all they did was install a hot tub and show up to drink large amounts of beer/alcohol and get naked in hot tub, then go watch sports on big TV........and make fun of us "local folks" whom they call "ignorant"......

So - They let tree limbs fall on old variety blue berry bushes and even after being told they could save the plants and how...they did not.

Two weeks ago, other "local" neighbors began to hike over there and harvest the "suckers" and "root shoots" from the blue berry bushes. I went over and no one has messed up the "mother plants" and in fact, you cannot even tell anyone was ever over there. There are dozens more plants to save.

Is this "stealing" or just "snitching"?

Yes, if it were my property I would not want anyone coming over and taking my blue berry bushes, but then I would not have let them fall in such disrepair and if I did.......I do think it would "serve me right" and serve the land right for someone to at least save the baby blue berry bushes?

When it "snitching" not stealing? Or is it ever?

Since we homeschool, this has been our Moral topic for discussion lately and we welcome your opinions. Thanks.

Since your children are obviously involved in this decision, I would say a person should contact the owners of the property and ask if they would mind. Then, it's not snitching or stealing.

mrs oz here :)
I was thinking the same thing. More than likely the owners couldn't care less. So, contact them and ask. If they do say no, then I would say......stay off of their property, as unfortunate as it would be to have the bushes die. In my experience, if it's a question in your mind as to whether something is right or wrong, it's probably wrong or you wouldn't be questioning it in the first place. Just my 2 cents.

Maura and OZ, I respect your thoughts, But I don't feel the same way about it.
As he said, all they do is come up and have drunken naked parties. Chances are they get there money from the drug trade. They already call the local folks "IGNORANT" and as I said, I understand your thoughts, but for him to go ovver there and ask for the plants would more than likely be not only a waste of time, but may even get something started between them they don't need.

The Good Lord owns those plants. Who do you think he would rather have them?????

I don't see it as snitching nor stealing, but rather saveing thier lifes. Making them useful, which is what the Good Lord wants from all his people and even the plants.

Let me ask this question because I am not sure about this certain type of plant. Can you take limbs from the plant, secure them into a pot of soil until they root and then cut them loose. I know you can tomatoes, and many other plants, but not sure about Blueberries. If so, that is what I would do. Leave the mother plant there and get the cuttings started while they are still getting food from the soil they are now in.
I would take plenty of time and explain it to the children that without some help, the plants are going to die anyway, so the man isn't lossing anything he isn't throwing away to start with.

That's just M2CW
Dennis

If they were there for three months during the summer or gardened themselves, that would be different, but it sounds like it's just a place to relax and hang out for them and they aren't too interested in anything beyond enjoying the country for the weekends they are there. As long as you don't diminish the value of their planting I don't really see it as a big deal. Is it stealing? Sure is! But there are degrees to everything. Digging up a few suckers from a bush seems pretty small potatoes to me.

Jennifer

It's stealing.
They pay the taxes. Whether you approve of how they use the property or not, those bushes belong to them, not you.
If you think God owns their bushes, then God owns your bushes, too.
How would you feel if I came to your place and chopped down the trees I didn't like?

Ask permission.

The heck with the plants. See if you can get an invite to those parties...!

Trespassing
 

Even going onto the property is trespassing. I'm sure that under no circumstances would you want someone to trespass onto your property.

Enough said!

I sure wouldn't want to give my children an education in crafting rationalizations like that.

The owners may be jerks, but it's their property to dispose of as they please.

.....Alan.

i absolutely disagree with your assessment they maybe business people simply unwinding on the weekend... drug trade??? pretty bold statement with no facts to back it up. The other thing is absolutley contact them to see if it is ok to take some shoots from "their" plants. they own the property it is theirs to do as they wish within limits of codes and laws period.

maybe relocate the plants to your boundary line, but on their side. That way their plats are still on their property, once the berries hang on your property you can do what you please. lol. I would just ask them if you can dig some and see what they say. Otherwise it is definitely stealing.

Snitching is telling on some one theft is 5 finger discount. So to Snitch you give information to cause others trouble.

I consider snitching and stealing two totally different things
Snitching is telling on someone. You would be a snitch and be snitching if you told the beer drinkers about your neighbors stealing the blueberry bush suckers.

I love the way some people explain away tresspassing and stealing. I see no way that this is justified.

Can I come over and tresspass on your place and steal whatever looks underutilized?

In the old days there was an honorable rural profession known as "woodcrafting". With it went a code of conduct that required you to put back more than you took.

With the influx of urban values it has fallen by the wayside.

Go onto the land. Encourage a plant to sucker or otherwise reproduce three times. Take the third one for yourself and you have left more than you have taken. If a apple tree falls, take three grafts from it. Graft them take back and plant two of them to replace the fallen tree.

Is the land legally posted? If not proceed. If yes request permission. I've never been denied access by long term rural residents. I also forage right of ways, and if adjoining land isn't posted, I don't worry terribly about wandering over a property line.

I've had plenty of drunken naked parties :dance: and I don't make any money off the drug trade. :shrug: :p

First of all how do you know all this stuff about your neighbors and their drunken naked parties?

Can we leave off the drunken and just have naked parties??????

Years ago, when the property came up for sale, I would have tried to buy it. If it was sold to someone else, or the former owners passed it down to their chilluns, I would have contacted the owners. I'd tell em I was a year round resident, and would keep an eye on their place, and call em in the big city if anything happened to their place they needed to know about. Basically get a country foothold with them, and then when a blueberry bush struck your fancy, you'd already pretty much know if it was alright or not. AND, if You were looking after the place, you could tell the blueberry thiefs to take a hike.

I caught an out of state landowner on 'his own' property about five years back (adjoining my place on the far end)... tried to buy it from him, he didn't want to sell... He gave me the name of his landman over in Louisiana. I contacted him a few months later, and we met up to walk the lines. (I already knew :p all of the lines). He was able to save a lot of visits by just calling me to see how his timber was growing. I called several times, about storm damage, and fires. After saving them a small fortune a few times, I asked if I could have some 'character' trees and some fire damaged ones. The answer was a big 'no problem'.

Dear city folks... if you own land and visit it only once a month, or year, or more, someone IS using it. The sanctity of property is only valid if you're living on it. If you do own land where you don't live, the best thing you can do is contact a neighbor and ask if they'd keep an eye on it.

Not trying to justify trespassing... But, its only trespassing if someone is there to report it. Let the neighbors look after it, and they'll keep others away, or call the law one.

BTW... I dont trespass... I know all of the owners locally and have permission.

Its stealing. It does not belong to you and you are taking it without permission. The reason does not matter.
Drunken naked partys are not a reason to steal. How they get their money is their business. Sounds like people are looking for a excuse to steal from their neighbors. If they were not treapassing they would not know what was happening or the condition of the trees. Trespassing was the first crime, theft is the second.
No excuses for theft or trespassing.

I could not tell if my neighbors were home or not. 110 acres means that you not only need to be right at the property line looking, but likely you need to go onto their land just to see if anyone is home.

'naked parties' I could walk around my land naked if I wanted to. My nearest neighbors would not see, nor could they, we do not live in the city. We have a bit of room between houses. So how do you know what kinds of parties they throw? Why do you care if their parties include nakedness?

It sounds like you are assuming that they are not home, you are assuming that they do not wear clothes. and you are assuming that they do 'drugs'.

Now granted they could be off somewhere else, they could be naked and they could be rubbing drugs into their belly-buttons; but it is not any of my business, nor yours.

Why is it that city folk want to be all up and inside of other folk's business?



"Thou shalt not steal"

Does that mean only if the owner is white? or a drug user? or maybe only when the owner is wearing clothes?

If I want a blueberry bush, I either buy the bush or the bareroot. Going onto someone's land to remove something is foreign to me. Take Care.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with going over and borrowing from the plants. They won't even notice or care. They don't sound like the kind of people that I would want to contact.

You aren't harming anyone ... sounds fine to me.

How hard is it to call and ask permission? "Hi. I noticed some of the deadfall from last winter squashed several of your blueberry bushes. Would you mind if I went over and salveged what I can of them?" That doesn't seem such a hard question to ask, and asking it that way would probably get you a "sure, no problem."

Even if they say "no" you have your answer and don't have to think about it anymore.

Our adjoining neighbors don't live on their property and have lots of berry brambles and wild apple trees. In exchange for us mowing the property and keeping an eye on it, we get to pick fruit to our heart's content. All it took was going over there, getting up a conversation, exchanging phone numbers, and living up to our end of the bargain.

mrs oz here :)

Not liking someone's behavior or extra curricular activities is not justification for trespassing on their land and stealing their property. Just saying.

Does that make it right to take something that belongs to them? It doesn't sound too neighborly that people will steal from their neighbor and make excuses for it. The only thing worse is some others that condone it.

Property rights. It ain't yours. It's none of your business. Nuf said.

Nel frattempto - If someone came onto my property while I was out of town, I would raise you know what about it.

Are you teaching your children to take whatever is unattended whenever they want it?? If it is someone elses property, do not touch it without the owner's permission!!!!! What a concept to teach your children. My parents would have beat my rearend for days, if I ever did something along those lines!!!

Otherwise, you might find yourself and your neighbors taking blueberry cuttings staring at the wrong end of a firearm, held by naked drug users!! If your assumption of their character is correct........ They just might be there, the next time you decide to take a walk to filtch some blueberry cuttings.....

If it ain't your property , don't mess with it!!!

#1 - Words have different meanings for different people in different regions of the country/world. I find it somewhat surprising that, considering the clearly stated question posed by the OP, that the definition of the word 'snitching' would even come to question.

#2 - I find it hypocritical that anyone that pretends to cherish their privacy and their solitary way of life would even dream of spying on their neighbors to know that they have drunken, naked parties in their hot tub - much less what size or kind of television set they own and what they watch on it.

#3 - To rationalize the morality of stealing by assuming that someone whom you don't know is involved in an illicit activity (drug trade) and to offer further approval of trespass and theft in the name of whatever religious deity that you may profess to believe in is not only blasphemy, but also hypocritical. Please offer a religion that condones stealing an I'll consider retracting this statement.

#4 - To qualify stealing by calling it 'borrowing' is the reason that there are more listings in the yellow pages for attorneys than any other listing other that restaurants (speculating here).

#5 - Whether or not a property is "legally posted" or not does not infer moral authority to trespass and steal. I find it hard to believe that this would even be offered as a legitimate opinion from people that profess to cherish their privacy and ownership of their property.

The wisest opinion offered in this thread to date (IMO) is by the poster that said if you have to question whether it's right or wrong, it's probably wrong. Especially since the original question was presented in the context of morality discussions involving children.

You said things are in disrepair and run down. You and the neighbor that also wants plants, etc could call in numerous complaints about the property and then approach them about helping them to maintain it since you're right next door. This way both you and your other neighbor and the absentee owners are all benefiting. It is a headache when the county comes down because of complaints and calling them in is acting within the law. They will want to not have to deal with the headache and you will be able to use the land for getting rid of the headache for them.

I call it stealing blueeberry bushes but i find no problem with stealing bushes under those conditions, where the owners are hardly ever there, they dont use the bushes or the runners and regard them as just "weeds".

steal as many as you can without making it look like someone has dug up the parent plants which are prolly to old to be good producers now anyway.

besides they sound like real [insert rude explicative here]s

snitching is stealing, lets just call a spade a spade.

some stealing is justifiable. :angel:

I am under the understanding that berries like this will just go wild and then fall by the way side and not produce much at all, if not taken care of, of which includes thinning them to keep them from being bunched up together and chokeing each other out. Without being weeded and taken care of they can sucker all they want, but will still go down hill.
Am I wrong here or is the blackberries that had been left by the wayside in my backyard lieing to me. I trimmed them back last fall, dug up some suckers that were too close together, and transplanted them this spring, after seeing berries less than the size of my pinkie nail last year, and they are as big as my thumbnail this year.
Does taking the suckers not come up to par of trimming them back so the mother plant has room to grow and produce bigger, better, and larger berries????
It seems several people took what I said out of context. I never said steal the whole plant. Never said tear up anything.
I would hate to think that I would get mad at someone that knew I had some blueberries, or blackberries, or whatever, that were in the shape the OP said these are in, and came over and got a few suckers from it. Maybe you never really know your neighbors, huh??
Now if someone came over and did damage to whatever I did have there, I could see it.
The only thing I was saying is these people, "IF the OP is correct in what he said", may walk into a hostil place if he went over to the neighbors house when they were home, with then drinking and partying.
And from what I have seen, and in the younger years even be party to, people that comes out to a place like that for a weekend, it is hard not to hear and see what goes on.
But that would be totally according to the lay of the land, the distance the were buildings from the lines, and the amount of vegative growth on the land. 110 acres is less than a quarter mile square. It could be less than 1/8 mile x 1/2 mile. :shrug:
Again, if the OP was correct about the people calling the towns people ignorant, I just may be a little snoopy myself.
I still don't see any thing wrong with taking a few suckers from the plants. As I said, it will more than like help the mother plant produce bigger and better berries anyway, so wouldn't that be the 1 for 3 woodsrunner was talking about????????? :shrug:

I don't think that taking cuttings is stealing. Now, if you were talking about ripping out the whole plant...

So, I can go in your car and take one speaker, as long as I dont take the whole stereo system?
or I can go in your house and take a can of soup so long as its from the back of the shelf where you keep the stuff you really dont care for?

or wander into your garage and collect beer cans?

stealing is stealing, but some stealing isnt as bad as other kinds of stealing.

but saying stealing makes us feel guilty, so we say "salvage" or "rescue" or "finding" or "snitching".

Words are interesting.

Nel, be careful of the road you're traveling down.

Maybe but what if I took something from you because I thought you were neglecting it? Because I'm a classic car collector and you've got that '39 Ford sitting in the back field that you're not doing anything with I tow it away one day...turns out it was your Dad's car that he drove up until he died.

Theft is theft. End of story. Keep your hands off of what isn't yours.

That said...give the OWNER a call and ask.

I veiw it as tresspassing & stealing.

This is one of those things where we try to justify the ends by the means.

Well, because they are aweful people, they don't desrve what they have, we do......

Doesn't really cut it. They have their stuff, to do with as they see fit.

We have our stuff, to do with as we see fit.

We shouldn't be so petty & jeoulious (I sure wish I could spell....) that we rationalize our transgressions.

Now, wouldn't bother me to watch the neighbors go help themselves in this minor case.

But, still & all, if the question is asked; it is stealing.

--->Paul

It's trespassing and stealing. How is it NOT?

Where did this information come from. Just guessing? Ask them for the plants!

Ruth

I can't believe some of the answers... and I can't believe the question even was asked. It's theft and it's trespassing. The right thing is to contact the owners and ask. If they say yes then great... and if they say no then respect their wishes.

It is amazing how some folks will rationalize just about anything to suit their desires.

Mike