The year was 1914 and the now legendary Robert Frost had written the controversial phrase “Good fences make good neighbors” in his poem, “Mending Walls.” Now, over a century later, that premise still begs the question: “Do they?”

Pose that question to retired schoolteacher, former General Dynamics technical writer and most recently published fiction writer Bonnie Giesler of Groton, and you’ll discover her less than gratifying experience of how fences are lacking where the notion of “neighborliness” is concerned. The comfort and sanctity of her home over three-and-a-half decades has been severely compromised in the past year. And the two fences separating her property from the one abutting it have produced nothing in the nature of neighborliness, in spite of constant measures taken to address the mountain of misery she endured this past year.

What other way to describe the plight of a widow in her 70s dealing with the strain of having to fend off a veritable landslide of “neighborly” vermin, garbage and weedy blight.

“In all the 35 years my husband Bill and I lived on Fort Street, and the 15 years he lived there before we were married, not once was there ever a problem with vermin — or anything resembling blight,” said Giesler. “Problems like waste control and weedy overgrowth were always addressed before they could cause problems.”

Then during the fall of 2016, after her husband died — followed by her older sister’s death as well — Bonnie Giesler felt the pangs of yet another form of despair: the tarnishing of the one place a human being can find comfort and solace … the grounds of her own home.

“It started in the spring of 2017 when I noticed what I thought to be just another chipmunk in the yard; though it seemed rather large,” she said.

A stately woman who swims every morning in the U.S. Naval Submarine Base pool, reads and writes voraciously, and cherishes the company of her small rescue dogs Oliver and Willa-Mae, Giesler shook her head in quiet awe in conveying her shock at realizing the visitor on her lawn was not, in fact, a “fat chipmunk” but rather a pregnant rat. It had taken up residence beneath the shed in her yard where “no such rodent of that sort had ever lurked,” in spite of five decades that included mild winters, multiple bird-feeders, gardens and apples on her lawn that had delighted many a squirrel and chipmunk.

What had been absent in all those years, though, was a property on the other side of her mesh fence hosting a jungle of weedy overgrowth and a large dumpster, uncovered, with fissures and open holes torn out in the bottom: an all-you-can-eat gourmet for every form of vermin.

“Dumpsters with no tops and garbage overflowing from a pair of four-family apartment complexes are going to draw rats and every other kind of scavenger,” said Giesler. “It certainly drew complaints from the waste pickup crews. The dumpsters are now gone, but they’ve been replaced by eight garbage cans which are supposed to service 32 people. None of the residents there recycle, since no recycle containers have been provided for that purpose.”

With the lawn unkempt from never being mowed, and weeds deemed by a professional arborist as invasive, Giesler and her husband had added a green fence to their other one and even offered to share in the costs of trimming and planting noninvasive growths. They also proposed putting in attractive gravel.

The neighboring landlord expressed no interest, she said.

The overgrowth and waste issues continued and persisted. It all reached its apex in the summer of 2017 with Bonnie Giesler still dealing with her bereavement over the loss of both her husband and sister. She spent the entire warm weather season wrangling with city officials over how to contend with a disturbing encroachment her fences could not ward off.

Giesler points out that the city had offered nothing, at that point, in the form of a remedy.

“I approached the City of Groton’s mayor about this and his answer was: ‘What do you want me to do about it?’” Giesler’s response to the mayor was, “I want you to do your job!”

Thus began a campaign she would conduct over the next year via e-mails, Facebook posts, letters to City Hall and the press, and phone calls to various city officials. She hoped her efforts might result in some action … an indication of fundamental concern for public health, and a degree of respect afforded in the name of responsibility for one’s property. But Giesler met with disappointment time and again.

“With no one taking responsibility for any of this, and with no other options, I was forced into having to purchase a vermin control service,” she said glumly.

The results horrified her.

“I naively thought what they did was similar to Havahart traps where they just remove the animals from your property,” Giesler said with a sad shake of her head. “But the rats die an agonizing death from a poison they eat while lured inside the ‘rat boxes’ laid out for them. Yes, I know they’re rats, but they’re still living, breathing creatures. I cried over it.”

Giesler believes all of that might have been avoided had simple, proper measures of waste disposal and blight control been in place previously. Her expectations are not complex or demanding: merely mowing the lawn, keeping weedy overgrowths reasonably under control, and a proper means of waste disposal that will not attract vermin.

Some help did finally emerge on the scene in the form of a new blight official for the City of Groton, Glenn Frishman. He took her concerns seriously, taking prompt action on the matter.

“He’s doing a great job,” said City Police Chief Mike Spellman, describing Frishman as a retired Army colonel who still has a command presence.

The landlord in question was officially ordered to literally clean up his act and to comply with city ordinances regarding waste disposal, public health and blight.

Still, why does a decent taxpaying, recently widowed woman in her seventies have to endure such an ordeal in the first place?

As Giesler’s daughter Jennifer, a schoolteacher in the Norwich Public Schools, so aptly put it: “My mother should not have to hire a lawyer or cut down that overgrowth herself. She works hard at keeping her home looking beautiful.”

It takes more than fences.