Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003 - 1:30 a.m.

::sigh:: Is it so much to ask for the neighbors to get a hamster, for cryin' out loud?

The more faithful of my readers will remember that for a time we had a frigging rooster nextdoor, and that it insisted on waking us up every morn anywhere between 3:30 and 6. We put up with that hideous thing for many, many months, until suddenly and without warning, the crowing ceased sometime in July. The source of the sudden quiet was happily speculated upon in the sweet, nearly silent moments when The Boyfriend and I lay in bed before sleep, listening to the hushed rumble of semi-faroff highway traffic and the cheerful chirping of crickets, unmolested by the harsh hacking sound of the Most Godawful Bird on the Planet. Did a neighbor finally lose patience and firmly set his foot down, letting the nextdoor people know in no uncertain terms that that god-damned thing had to go? Or did someone - perhaps someone who watched a lot of The New Detectives on Discovery Channel and took copious amounts of notes on how to commit the perfect crime - poison the friggin' thing? Perhaps the neighbors themselves, in a fit of sleep-deprived mania, slaughtered the little monster and ate it. We hoped he made a tasty meal.

Not wanting to jinx our newfound peace and quiet, I didn't write about the joyous occasion, because I figured the second I did, all the lovely quiet and long hours of sleeping in would disappear as quickly as they had come. So I went off to Paris and kept my joy to myself, I'm ashamed to say. But now, to my everlasting sadness and crushing disappointment, my revelry at the joy of roosterless morns and uninterrupted sleep-filled nights has been ripped cruelly away, my friends.

Never ones to be satisfied with nice, normal pets, the kind of pets which do not move the neighborhood to brutality, the frigging neighbors have replaced the Rooster Which Never Slept with The Dog Which Never, Ever Stops Fucking Barking. A german shepherd with a gigantic set of lungs and what must surely be the hugest fucking larynx in the entire known canine world. I kid you not. And that dog is a freak, yo. Seriously. I don't know what the fucking neighbors do to it, but I "met" it shortly after they got it, and it was a nice, normal dog. A white german shepherd female about 6 months old, still puppyish and rather inquisitive. A nice, friendly dog. We'd heard it barking now and again, but nothing too awful, although it *was* mostly at night, when we were trying to sleep, and we didn't realize it was right next door, because the damn thing barks like a canon, and it echoes all thru the neighborhood, so we thought it was down the hill, in the street below.

That was in June. What they have now is a freaked out, high-strung, psychotic FREAK of a dog that completely comes unhinged at the slightest disturbance in the Force. If a squirrel runs across the overheads 5 blocks down, the damn dog goes into a spasm of barking the likes of which has never been seen or heard, and it does not stop for 3 hours. Consequently, the fucking thing Never. Shuts. Up. If we open a window, it barks. If we close the window, it barks. If we turn the television on, talk to each other, move in bed in the dead of night and the bed creaks, it barks. If we open or close the sliding glass door, no matter how stealthily and silently, the fucking dog barks. It has become a contest of sorts to see who can do what in the house without setting the damned dog off, with the grand-daddy of all challenges, the one for immunity and all the frigging money, being operating the sliding glass door. What really sucks is when you've been padding quielty around for hours and the stupid thing has finally just subsided, and the frigging phone rings, which just sets it off all over again. And really, all our attempts to operate like a German U-boat in American waters at the height of WWII are really pretty much for naught, because no matter how quiet we are, we can't control the neighborhood squirrels, and I swear to you, those damn things are having a field day taunting the little psycho day in and day out. As I sit here now, it's barking, and has been for at least the last hour. The Boyfriend sometimes goes out on the deck and barks back at it, his theory being the more he provokes it, the better chance it'll develop laryngitis and be unable to bark. My plan is a better one, I think. *I* think we should go down to the store and buy some Unisom tablets and grind up a few in a half pound of hamburger and chuck that over the fence. I actually met up with the dog out on a walk two weeks ago, and it really has changed. It went from being all bouncy puppy to twitchy, lunging hellhound, like it's suffering from severe PTSD. And maybe it is, because I swear to you people, I saw a squirrel wearing what looked suspiciously like a club t-shirt the other day, bouncing around on the end of a pine branch just above the back fence of the yard nextdoor, where the damn dog was going ballistic. I think they're organized, the squirrels. You know that breakfast cereal with the commercials where all the squirrels are teamed up and working in unison to get their hands on the box? Like that. Only in a sadistic plan to drive the dog crazy and take the rest of us with it so they can rule the neighborhood. First here, and then the world.

Go ahead; laugh. I know I'm right.

Peace out,
Katie

One Year Ago Today

1 comments so far

There was what, no one at the mutant hamster races, and we had one entry into
the Madame Curie look-alike contest, and he was disqualified later. Why do I bother?

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008