A MUM was left gobsmacked when she discovered a stranger had brazenly pitched a tent in her front garden overnight.
Erika White, 38, was in disbelief when her son spotted the bizarre sight at the crack of dawn, around 6.35am.
She claims the cheeky camper had set up a makeshift home right on the lawn of their end-of-terrace house, leaving the family flabbergasted.
The baffled finance analyst, who lives in Dartford with her three children – a seven-year-old daughter and sons aged 14 and 8, decided to confront the audacious trespasser.
Erika recalled the surreal encounter: "It was the absolute audacity of it.
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"My littlest boy was looking out the window to check the weather, and he said to me, 'Mummy, there's a tent outside'.
"It literally took up the whole front garden."
Erika approached the tent and addressed the unexpected visitor.
She added: "I went out. I didn't want to be aggressive.
"He looked at me. I said, 'Excuse me – do you realise you're in my front garden in a tent? Could you move yourself, please?'"
To her astonishment, the sleepy camper initially ignored her polite request, making himself comfortable with a family-sized strawberry gateaux inside his tent.
Erika's Ring doorbell camera hadn't picked up any activity, leading her to believe the trespasser had slyly pitched his tent nearby and moved it onto her property under cover of darkness.
"I remember hearing noises around 5am, but I thought it was just the tumble dryer," Erika said.
Despite confronting him twice – at 6.35am and again at 6.50am – the camper only decided to move on after Erika threatened to call the police. He finally packed up and left around 7.05am.
The perplexed mum speculated that the intruder might be a worker at a nearby fruit-picking farm, as many commute along the road.
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Erika added: "He was presentable and didn't seem homeless, which made it even more confusing."
It's an encounter Erika and her kids won't forget anytime soon.
Elsewhere, Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay was faced with freeloaders of his own when squatters vowed to stay at his posh £13million London pub - claiming the former boozer was "theirs".
And it's not only properties that are left vulnerable to trespassers, as another family discovered when a devious freeloader broke into their Netflix and then left them cryptic messages.
