Seriously, who’d want to even touch this thing, let alone its shit?
The dog shit is finally gone. That green bag which I used to pick up the dozen or so little piles of dog shit from my neighbor’s Boston Terrier, ‘TK’, is no longer steaming in front of their garage door as it had been for the last three days. I had resorted to this tactic once before, as my next-door neighbors have been slacking in their neighborly duty to pick up the shit left behind by their dumb, slobbering canine. That first bag, which I left at their door about two months ago, had disappeared on the first day. I thought that would have taken care of it. Why on earth they left the new bag to sit in front of their garage door for so long this time is beyond me. Didn’t they know how much it punished me to see it rotting there?
Look, I get it – my neighbors are elderly and it’s hard for them to get out of the house, let alone bend over to scoop up a freshly laid turd on my turf. But I find it unacceptable that they continually let their pet out, albeit usually tied to a rope that reaches about thirty feet, and then, through their kitchen window, they watch me watch the dog through my kitchen window as it squats in his favorite places around the front of my yard. If a car is parked in my driveway, TK will wash its tires. I can’t walk barefoot in the front yard because the landmines are cleverly camouflaged as pinecones, and one could turn up anywhere.
I don’t like dogs, okay? If I wanted piles of crap in my yard I could let my cats out. It’s bad enough that I keep finding raccoon shit in the window wells under my bedroom window. I clean up shit from cats, birds, and fish in my own home with little argument, but I should not be responsible for other people’s pets!
I’ve lived here for three years now, after buying this house from my neighbors. It used to belong to their even more elderly mother. Ever since, they’ve continued to treat it as their own property. They’ve taken rhubarb from my back yard without permission, so I dug up a plant and gave it to them, as well as some peonies which they gave me a sob story about their son planting years before. They’re nice, church-going people, and I was happy to accommodate their desires to cling to their pasts like the gray sweatpants cling to their bony bodies – but enough is enough. This is my property and if I want to let the petunias in my window box dry up in the heat of the summer that’s my business – I don’t need a ‘friendly’ phone call from next door reminding me to water them. I thought that building a six foot privacy fence between our backyards during the first Spring I was here would have given them the clue that I wanted some space.
Hey neighbors, I’m having a barbeque, here’s your hot and fresh dog!
By the way, if you think I’m being too hard on the elderly or the neighborly, I might add the following into evidence: aside from constant dog-in-yard issues, they’ve also crashed into my parked car the week I was moving in, rendering it useless for days as the front tire and axle were repaired. They once apparently left their own car running, inside of their closed garage, which is attached to my garage and my house, overnight. I received a phone call in the afternoon the day after checking to see that I was alright, and they told me of their slight slip-up. There was also a very condescending comment from the Mrs. once, when I inquired about an incident that happened in the neighborhood one Sunday morning and she replied to me, “Oh I wouldn’t know, WE go to church on Sunday mornings.” This was probably said to me while she was smoking a cigarette and drinking whiskey. I’ve heard she’s got a bit of a reputation around town for her mouth.
So, let’s get back to the shit in hand. In the beginning, I’d see the old man hobble around in my front yard picking up after his dog occasionally, and although it wasn’t an ideal arrangement I’d learned to overlook it. But in the last year or more he hasn’t been doing his job. I mowed the grass a few weeks ago and came up with what I thought was an ingenious new way to drop a subtle hint to him – I staked out the piles using sticks which had fallen from the trees during the last strong wind. I mowed around the spots and waited, hoping to see him emerge from his home to pick up the now new-and-improved more obvious piles. Then I waited. And I waited some more. Enough time had passed that I needed to mow a second time, but I stuck to my plan and just mowed around the stakes again, and set a few new ones. Finally, the other day, I had had enough of it, and I went out there and picked them up myself, and tied the bag shut, and flung it onto their driveway. I know that by now some of you might be thinking that I should have just had a normal conversation with them months ago asking them politely to refrain from letting their dog in my yard. Well, you people obviously don’t know me. This is how I handle trivial problems – by a combination of non-confrontation, overly elaborate plots, anxiety-raising behaviors, and peeking through my windows when I hear their doors open or close. Now that the last bag is out of sight, I will be on the lookout for TK and his fresh attack on my property. The only question is: how will I escalate my return fire the next time?
Patti Lynn Henry
Patti Lynn Henry was delivered in a blizzard in February of 1984 by a drunk doctor who nearly fainted at the sight of a baby with a disintegrated umbilical cord. She’s faced countless tragedies, both real and imaginary, ever since. She’s a hostage of her home town of Northfield, MN. When Patti isn’t busy writing, she’s dressing her cats up in costumes and burying the photographs in her garden.
Email Patti at pattihenry@secretlaboratory.org Visit her website at www.pattilynnhenry.com
Before my Dad died six years ago, my parents lived in a nice neighborhood outside of town. Their neighbors across the street would always let their large dog run over to my parent’s yard and crap. My parents were too nice to ever say anything, so every time I came to visit I and the dog crapped, I would take a shovel and throw i back into their yard. When my Mom moved into an apartment with her poodle, she always carried doggy bags for when she walked her dog.
You were a good daughter then! In the winter, back when I shoveled both of our driveways, I would scoop the piles up and into their yard. Now I have a snowblower and I don’t discriminate what I plow over. The point is, the brief period when I owned a dog in a city and took it for walks, I too would bring baggies and would not let her in the neighbor’s yards. It’s common courtesy, and I’m pretty sure it’s a law. What will it take for people to realize their rudeness?