PREVENTING VANDALISM

Preventing Vandalism of Xmas Lights

Vandalism is a concern since your display is very high profile.  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, vandals hate light. 
• Add cameras to the front of your house and advertise it.

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 we had the answer. The low-tech solution is to flood your display with floodlights during the off-hours.  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 local lighting shop or mount video cameras and record what's going on.  Any lead you can give to the police after an incident is very useful.

Finally, if you do suffer vandalism, contact the police and then ask a neighbour to get in touch with the news.  It's a great human interest story and you might get lucky if the vandal feels guilty about what has been done.