Another Day In The Neighborhood
As I sit here nursing a bad headache and sinus-induced cold, I can’t help but gaze outside my window and take a look at the outside world, looking for any sort of relief.
The sun is shining, the driveways and streets are colored yellow from our days of excessive pollen, and one of the kids that lives next door to me is openly taking a leak in somebody’s front yard. The young, elementary school kid ran over to the best yard in the area (these people pay big bucks for their weekly yard work; their lush green grass and well manicured lawn is the envy of the neighborhood), stopped a few feet off the street, and then let loose a long stream of urine right into the lower branches of a magnolia tree. Fortunately, he had his back to me.
Now keep in mind it’s not like the kid ran into a back yard or tried to hide behind the trunk of a tree (any tree – there are many around here) to take a pee. There were plenty of choices if he wanted to try to act civilized during this assumed-to-be emergency nature call. But no, he practically stood out in the open and showed the neighborhood his appalling behavior skills and complete lack of respect for other people’s private property.
Take note that his own house (and front yard full of trees) was only about eighty feet away. That’s nothing for a boy in third or fourth grade to run.
But wait! There’s more!
Don’t worry about the mother. She was still way back and trying to wrestle control of their black lab dog. Their dog is probably about a year old by now and full of spirit. What’s good is that the dog normally gets to walk with the mom or dad to the bus stop and greet the children each afternoon. A bad part is that both parents normally let the dog run on her own and terrorize the street on the way back home.
After the boy finished urinating in public, I noticed that one of the neighborhood cats was quickly walking through one of the front yards across the streets. It kept looking back over its shoulder and then suddenly bolted across the yard. You probably guessed it. The black lab was sprinting after the cat and dragging her leash along the ground.
The poor cat darted for safety. It ran around the corner of the house just as the black lab closed the distance. I couldn’t see if the dog caught the cat, but the sight of it closing the distance and appearing to strike was disturbing enough.
It’s one thing to watch tigers and leopards on the nature channels hunting and killing their prey, but those sights do NOT belong in today’s neighborhoods — especially since my jackass neighbors rarely keep their dog under control.
Just after the cat and dog rounded the corner of the house, the mother was seen walking down the middle of the street (only losers walk on sidewalks!), appearing to laugh as the dog ran across the front yards. She showed absolutely no concern as she and the kids went over to the corner of the house to look at what happened. They stayed there for a minute or two before the mother walked home with the dog tagging along by her side, but not with the leash in her hand.
A few minutes later the boys finally left the site of whatever happened and ran home. There’s no telling if the cat survived the encounter, let alone escaping from it unscathed. The part that concerns me is that they stayed looking at a spot for a few minutes. If nothing happened to the cat, I wouldn’t expect them to stay focused on a spot for so long.
One of my pet peeves (apart from my other jackass neighbor and twin boys who boldly and repeatedly walk across our front lawn after being asked not to) is when people just let their pets roam the neighborhood.
People, we have leash laws for a reason. It’s not just for the safety your pet, but it’ll also help protect other people’s pets and the rest of the animals out there. Don’t forget that not everybody appreciates seeing a strange dog barking and running towards them at full speed.
But, alas, people like my next door neighbors choose to let their wildish dog run free on most days. It’s obvious that with their free-spirit mentality they just don’t care about common courtesy. Nor do they seem to care that their dog will be outside on the loose about once every other week, roaming the street and barking at people until it finally dawns on the owners that the dog isn’t inside the house or fenced in back yard.
I just love my neighbors! /s