Love Thy Neighbor? Oh, if it were only that easy.

Imagine having your pets poisoned, your kids tormented or maggots from a trash pile next door spread their way into your home.

Those are just some of the tales of horror on AOL's recent message board, Neighbors From Hell (View the slideshow).There were more than 1,000 posts with stories of everything from hurtful gossipers to a man who caught his neighbor's teen relieving himself on his lawn.

Just about everyone, it seems, has a nightmare story to tell about the people next door. You could say squabbling with neighbors is an American tradition. Take the famed Hatfield and McCoy feud of the late 1800s, which-- as lore has it -- started over disputed property lines and a displaced hog.

More than 200 years later, we're still arguing about the same things. We had numerous posts about unwanted pets crossing property lines and people taking drastic measures to keep them away.

The Hatfields and McCoys had one thing on us, though -- a lot of space. Today quarters are close and noise and unsightly yards seem to be the biggest beefs. For example, one poster was living with all-night partiers on one side of him and a couple who wakes at 4 a.m. to work out with music in their yard on the other side. His only chance at relief was to move.

There's little hope for improvement. The United States is 230 years old and still in a growth spurt. The U.S. trails only India and China as the most populous country in the world, and tipped 300 million people last October. It added 100 million in a record amount of time. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it took 139 years for the U.S. to get to 100 million people, which it did in 1915. It took 52 years to get to 200 million in 1967 and just 39 years to reach 300 million last year. Thanks to a steady birth rate, medical advances that help people live longer and a historic influx of foreigners, researchers predict the population will top 400 million in 2044, 37 years from now.

All of this means were living closer together than ever. According to Census data, the south and the west have seen the largest influx of new citizens, with some communities growing as much as 50 percent in the last five years. This influx of humanity and decrease of elbow room means more traffic, more sprawl and more arguments over growth.

So what's an American family to do?

Learn to live with it. We suggest browsing these posts -- you may find your neighbors could be a lot worse.