The Perils of Country Life

The people who live in a trailer behind the church that is unfortunately several hundred yards off our property are the reason we spent more than $400 to dig a trench and line it with a rhizome barrier to plant a graceful arc of bamboo, which provides a living screen that looks beautiful in all seasons.

So far it has worked great, and for 7 years now, bamboo has been behaving and not taking over the mountain. Now if we could just find a sound screen! Judging from the sound of things, said neighbors have a billion yappy little dogs, all living outside. These people are clearly deaf. Every single weekend country-western music blares at concert decibel levels, and they fire up obnoxious noisy machines. I am pretty sure they don't have a concrete lawn, but it sounds like they are jack-hammering something, if not racing engines at mind-splitting levels. And every -- single -- day when they drive home, the yappy dogs begin a rousing chorus of discordant barking that lasts for hours. I timed three hours - that was the record so far. THREE.

I'd go over and introduce myself and tell them how impressive all this to me, (silly me, thinking country living could be serene), but I am pretty sure I am not a favorite of theirs, either. As I said, they are clearly deaf and I don't know sign language.

And several years ago they had a goat ((I don't know, it's the country, for gawd's sake)). This goat kept getting lose and ambling over to eat our plants and flowers, which were clearly superior to theirs. I would find said goat on our terrace chomping away on the container plants, and would wrestle the beast home. This went on three separate times. It finally appeared one day and scared the hell out of my old cat Xenon, who disappeared for a few days. We finally found him in the woods up a tree. Xenon was an old gentlemen at that time, and had no business living in the woods in a tree. We got him down, and he was traumatized for days. That was too much. You don't mess with my cats.

The neighbors came over shortly after that looking for the damn goat and asked if I'd seen it. "Yes," I replied. "It was delicious."

Damn if the silly thing never got loose again (I heard they found it). A friend suggested I present them with receipts from the plants the goat ate. Fat damn chance that'd do any good.


One time when we were out of town, our kitten dashed out of the house on a pet-sitter. Because she was doing all the wrong things to try to find her, I asked a friend to come over to try her hand at finding Phoenix. She walked down the neighbor's drive at 3 in the afternoon, and she said you would've thought she was sneaking through the woods with a mask on and a gun drawn by the reception she got. The man sprang from the trailer and acted totally whack (this is a petite blonde who doesn't look like she would hurt a fly). Meth lab, anybody??