Owning your plot of land to make what you want is liberating, but there are times when other people don’t respect that enough. In this case, Tomas Lyons was trying to devise ways to keep unwanted guests away from his yard.
Naturally, most people would want a bit of privacy in their homes, but Thomas was persistent that no one should loiter on his property. This would cause him to try quite a several things to deter people. He’s the crazy story of his plans.
Creating “Natural” Borders Can Work
One of the best ways to deter unwanted guests is by creating borders they’ll respect. An easy one to use? Plants. Plants are in the way and add to the look of your yard. Plants like hedges, brushes and bushes, flowers, trees, and anything significant will work well.
This is sound advice to any homeowner looking to create a border that looks nice. Thomas wasn’t too keen on this, though, probably because of the work it would take and add to the normal yard work. Even the work of putting up a nice fence was too much for Thomas.
So What Did Thomas Do?
For whatever reason, Thomas installed a security camera rather than do what is effective and add to his yard. Was this to give him leverage when complaining to the neighbors? Nope. Instead, it was a part of a more elaborate plan.
He added a sprinkler right where the camera was pointed and set it off whenever it detected a person—even going so far as to alert him when the water in the sprinkler ran low so he could keep it going 24/7. It was a dramatic step!
So that’s the End, Right?
Rather than staving off random passers-by and leaving it at that, Thomas uploaded clips of the system activating to Tik Tok. These videos blew up in popularity, prompting Thomas to post more and more times when people would cross his yard.
This garnered mixed reactions as people either agreed that it was a mostly harmless way to deter loiterers or complained that it was pretty petty and said there were other ways to keep people away. Either way, the videos did better and better, with one video getting 3.5 million views.
How Did Thomas Handle The Fame?
For a time, he continued to upload more of these videos after the first did so well, and the others did well too. So much so that in October of 2021, his story was broadcasted on FOX News in America for its ridiculousness and made it to several newspapers.
But for one reason or another, Thomas decided he was not uploading more videos of people getting onto his lawn. Did he stop? We’re not sure, but given the lack of complaints, he’s probably tried another way to keep loiterers off his property.