I've blogged before about my neighbors. Neighbors whose names I don't know and who I could not pick out of a line up if my life depended on it (but I can identify when they're in their own yard). Neighbors who I've spoken to a couple of times in the couple of years they've been neighbors of mine but who set a bad first impression with me and I've never quite gotten over it.Yesterday did not help the impression.
I was sitting in my living room, minding my own business, when I see feet pass by one of my living room windows. (I raise the blinds a little so that the boys can look out and see what's going on in the world outside.) Now, I was expecting someone to come do some gutter work for me but seeing as the person coming for that was a stalker guy, I figured he would've rang my doorbell first (which, when he showed up, he did). So, I was curious who was on my property and went to look out the window than I'd seen the feet pass...a different window closer to my fenceline.
Imagine my surprise when I see a woman with a crazed look on her face looking intently at my window, a rake raised over her head and then swing it down HARD on my window. It totally freaked me out. I was staring in disbelief when she raised the rake over her head again. I yelled at her, asking "What are you doing?" There was no indication that she heard me as she brought the rake down on my window again hard (I figure the voices in her head had drowned me out.).
This time I see something fall down the window and then "fly" back up. The crazy lady is wielding her rake at some poor animal!
I ran outside in time to see the rake go over her head again. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING???" I yelled again.
She looked over at me and I watched in awe how the crazed look went to almost normal in seconds (how do they do that?) and she brought the rake down to her side. "That was in my attic," she said, pointing to the frightened squirrel that was hanging on for dear life to the side of my BRICK house (I've never seen any animal that clutched on to brick!).
She goes on to tell me how it had gotten into their attic through a hole in their overhang (which she pointed to, several times), that it made a lot of noise in the attic and they had to board the hole up. And all I can think is, it's out and they've blocked its entry and it's now on MY propery - leave it the f alone! I stepped towards the squirrel and it flinched, like an animal that's been abused does when it's approached and thinks it's about to be hit. It broke my heart.
So I kind of got between the squirrel and the crazy lady and asked if she was wanting to kill the poor thing and she said no. After that, I don't really remember what we said to each other after that (although I do remember her repeating several times "look at her! she was in my attic! we had to put up a board to keep her out!") but I said something and her response made me think she would leave the poor critter alone so I came into the house.
I really think she would have killed the squirrel had I not gone out there and I came into my house and all I could think was, "it was probably gathering nuts to take home to its family and what would have happened if it never made it back".
Is it too much to hope that one day I'll have a nice, normal, animal friendly family live next door to me? Although the lady who lived there before was a cat lover (known in the city - by everyone - as the cat lady). She was obsessed with cats and had dozens of them. She couldn't stand any other animal though. Someone in between the two extremes I've seen would be nice? Is that too much to ask?
But, what about you? Do you have good neighbors or not?
4 comments:
You make me laugh. Not about the lady wanting to kill the squirrel, that's just cruel, but I can picture her with that crazy look in her eyes swinging her rake. BTW, I have great neighbors. They do still exist. I promise.
Poor squirrel. :( I hope she's able to recover from her encounter with the rabid rake lady.
I have fantastic neighbors. We're always trading food and going to their house for late-evening wine. (They used to come to our house, but that was pre-kittens. She's got nasty allergies.) We're all moving somewhere else this summer, though, and we're all bummed. The neighbors in the rest of the neighborhood are really cool for the most part, too. Take heart - someday you'll have normal neighbors again, and if not, you'll always have inspiration for villains in your stories. ;)
That would make me so mad, Lucy. I'd be swinging a rake at that lady with a crazy look in MY eyes! LOL At my last house, the lady who lived next door hated cats. One day I was sitting at my computer (which was under the window) and one of our cats was in it. All of a sudden, a bucket full of water hit the window and the cat jumped off onto my computer. Thank God the window wasn't open or the water would have fried my computer. I was so mad, I went outside and demanded to know what the hell the neighbor was doing. She said the bucket "slipped". Which was completely impossible since she would have had to throw the water at an upward angle to hit the window. Grumble.
I'm told that we have good neighbors where I live now, but I haven't met any of them.
OMG, L! I would've ripped that rake out of the crazy woman's hands! What a vicious thing to do! And wierd! See how this has called forth my exclamation points! LOL.
We have neighbors on one side of us who shoot birds out of the trees and breed rabbits they let run loose by the dozens to get ripped apart by other animals or hit by cars. We think they shot our dog in the leg too (even though we have an invisible fence to keep ours in, it butts up right next to their house almost). Our neighbors on the other side are odd, but not crazy. LOL.
My dad and stepmom love birds so they have feeders everywhere, which draw squirrels. So they shoot at the squirrels. I scold them for doing that. Often.
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