Vandalism is a concern since your display is high
profile in your community. Staying up all
night with a shotgun is not the most practical idea
but very effective. Using a paintball gun
instead of the shotgun will at least keep the evil
doer alive. There are other options.
- Use a rope or chain and thread it through
all of your outdoor Christmas pieces.
- Turn on the flood lights when the display is
turned off. Evil doers hate light.
- Add cameras to the front of your house and
advertise it.
- Ask your local law enforcement agency to
make extra passes by your display.
It's pretty depressing to check your display in
the morning and see someone has removed a part of it
are decided to damage a portion. No one has
been able to explain why people do this and no one
ever admits to doing any vandalism. I wish I
had the answer.
The low-tech solution is to bathe your display
with floodlights during the off-hours. Put up
a lot of signs saying high-voltage is present at all
times and if you have a large outdoor dog, drag the
dog house around to the front of the house, make it
part of the light display and have your dog keep an
eye on things.
The high tech solution is to use motion sensing
floodlights available from the home center or mount
video cameras and record what's going on. Any
lead you can give to the law enforcement agency
after an incident is very useful.
An expensive but very effective option is to have
your police department park one of their cruisers in
your driveway.
Finally, if you do suffer vandalism, contact the
police and then ask a neighbor to get in touch with
the news media. It's a great human interest
story and you might get lucky if the evil-doer feels
guilty about what has been done.
