By Lee Pitts

I have been trespassed against by backpackers, sky divers, insurance salesmen, rock pickers, photographers and dog walkers. When I asked these folks, "Didn't you see the ‘No Trespassing’ sign?" their reactions were always the same.

"Who me? Surely you weren't referring to me. I’m not hurting anything."

They come up with some dandy excuses for being on your property, don't they? Backpackers, for instance, always claim that they "became disoriented."

Photographers say they had to climb over your fence, because the "sun was not right on the other side of it." I caught a woodcutter once with his pick-up loaded with what was once a beautiful tree and he told me he just wanted to try out his new chain saw and he was sure I wouldn’t mind, because in a way he was doing me a favor by clearing the land. Hunters always say the same thing: "So and So said it was all right for me to hunt here." Invariably I’ve never heard of old So and So. But I’d sure like to meet him though.

A dog walker once explained: "Sure, I saw the "No Trespassing Sign" but my miniature poodle just drug me through the gate." I’ve had people claim they were looking for Indian artifacts and one lost soul said he was searching for relics from the past. But all he had in his pocket were my missing fence pliers. My space has even been invaded by hovering helicopters, sky divers landing and ultra-light pilots taking off.

Clearly, a simple "No Trespassing Sign" is not adequate to keep intruders out. In fact, I think the words "No Trespassing" mean "Welcome" in some language. I know that many of you have similar problems because I’ve read your feeble attempts to keep strangers from breaking fences, leaving litter and frightening the animals. Through the years I’ve collected several of these proclamations in my notebook.

Most of the clever signs attempt to frighten away the would-be trespasser with the threat of bodily injury. Of course there is the familiar "Beware Of Dog" and the even more effective, "Don't worry about the dog, beware of wife!" Dogs are a common denominator in most of the signs of our times it seems. "Our Doberman has had his breakfast; won't you join him for lunch?" "Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of two unsociable German Shepherds and one shotgun that isn't loaded with pillows."

Perhaps the most ineffectual sign I’ve ever seen said simply, "Fine For Hunting." It had been riddled by a shotgun blast. The best ranch sign I think I ever saw was in Idaho: "Danger, radioactive fallout area." I bet the joggers stayed away from there in droves. In Oregon I saw a warning near a gully that read: "If you dump here we guarantee double your garbage back." In the beautiful Hill Country of Texas the message was: "Persons are prohibited from picking bluebonnets from any but their own graves." In Missouri I came across a placard that read: "We shoot every tenth peddler and the ninth one just left."

Ranchers will go to almost any extreme to keep trespassers out, it seems. A beautiful hand-lettered sign on a fence post in Arizona read in beautiful calligraphic letters, "I wouldn't worry about our mad raging bull. But then, I'm not standing in the field with him, either. You are!"

I once knew a rancher in the Nebraska Sandhills who tried to appeal to the moral sense of would-be intruders by simply slapping a copy of the Ten Commandments on his entry gate. If you've ever read the Commandments you know that they had trouble with trespassers even way back then. Remember the familiar words, "Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor's?" And "Thou shalt not steal?"