20100415

Dear Neighbor

Do you know you drive me crazy?


I regularly wake to the startled yelps and pleas of your two dachshunds that sit like a mismatched pair of accidentally dropped clown shoes. Heel to heel with mouthy toes in the air, they face the world.  Without any sound, they could be cute.


Big Older Shoe then Little Skinnier Shoe crying out at every single passerby or neighbor's arrival, departure or mere visit to their own yard.  Walkers.  Cyclists.  Drivers.


"Hey! What's that?" 
"Hey! Wa-wa-what!"
"Hey! What? Who's that?"
"Hey! Wa-wa-what?"

When I take a cup of coffee to the porch, they nag.  If I check my mail, they bitch.  Even when I'm driven indoors and they can't see me, they see or hear someone and incessantly bark and complain.  At least a block's worth of dogs follow their lead in a panic: a shepherd at the corner, the pair of boxers at the other corner, the hound to my other side with his big old raspy Labrador buddy, plus the entire freaking menagerie of ankle-biters across the street.  Those are just the voices that I can identify.

I don't blame the tattered fuzzy slippers that have been left sitting in the yard so much, pathetically lost in the place they are supposed to belong.  

When the neighbor guy rolls out of his car at the end of a workday, the racket sounds and he loudly, emphatically claims, "Damn. You. Fucking ass-hole."  

He is talking to YOU. And I have to agree.

3 comments:

Chris said...

Who knows. Maybe someone in the neighborhood stole 99 dalmatians.

Tonette Time said...

Ha! I feel like I'm in a cartoon some days! But, I haven't seen sign of the visually loud breed yet.

Laurie said...

We have the opposite problem. No animal sounds at all at our place. If a dog barks in the neighborhood, the owners get a warning from the neighborhood police lady. If it keeps happening, you get fined $100 dollars. The third offense is serious. Dog must move out.
I do really feel for you though. You deserve to every now and then go out on your porch on a sunny afternoon and enjoy a blissful quiet moment.
What to do? Maybe buy some dog bones and toss a couple over the fence to keep the pups busy.
Hey, I love your new page header Toni!