Barking up the wrong tree

My next-door neighbors never come outside. I don’t know if it’s a Barnabas Collins deal or if they are allergic to the sun, but we never see them, which is fine, because I don’t want to have to remember their names and make small talk with them.

But we may be headed toward war, thanks to their dogs. Two things you don’t want in your life are neighbor trouble and in-law trouble, but I may not be able to avoid the former.

The other morning, Lucky, my dog, was in the back yard going crazy, growling and barking and making kamikaze runs at the fence. This meant that something was on the other side of the fence that was disturbing her. With Lucky, you never know – it could be a cat or a neighborhood kid or an al Qeada sleeper cell. Her reaction is the same.

So I went outside to investigate and saw the culprit – a rat was running around my front yard. I yelled at it to get out of there, and then it barked at me. Well, I’m no Marlin Perkins, but I know that rats don’t bark, so I looked more closely and realized it was the neighbor’s Chihuahua.

I despise that Chihuahua. Actually, my vampire neighbors have two of them, and they bark non-stop every second that they’re outside. The neighbors have a wooden swing set in their back yard, and the Chihuahuas find it entertaining to scurry to the top of it, which gives them a good vantage from which to look into my yard and bark their high-pitched incessant noise at Lucky. I can’t speak dog language, but I’m pretty sure whatever they’re saying is insulting.

This hurts Lucky’s feelings, since she’s never done anything to those yappy beasts, and so she naturally responds by barking back at them. I can’t blame her, but I don’t want to hear it, so then I have to go out back and curse at Lucky, which makes us both feel bad.

Anyway, on the morning I saw them running around – there’s a brown one and a black one – I went next door to tell the neighbors that their dogs had gotten out of the fence. I wasn’t really being nice; I just wanted them to get away from my fence before Lucky had a heart attack. Eventually a woman came to the door – I could only assume that she was the lady of the house, since I haven’t seen her outside in five years – and I told her that I believed her cute little dogs had gotten loose.

This woman looked like she’d just risen from a coma. She didn’t say a word to me, just said over her shoulder, “The Chihuahuas are out,” turned her back to me and crept back to her coffin. In a few seconds an older woman appeared, and she brushed past me out the door, looking for the miniature menaces.

I walked around to the side of the house and pointed to a spot where the dogs had dug out under her fence. She just grunted, then pointed to some boards that had been tossed into the ditch between your yards and said, “Are those your boards?” I said, “No, m’am, I don’t throw crap in the ditch and leave it.” She missed my sarcasm and went to get a board to seal up the hole. Nice people.

Sunday I took Lucky for a walk, and as we walked past the neighbor’s house, I heard the yapping again. The brown Chihuahua was again running free in the front yard, and it was coming toward us in a menacing manner. Lucky glanced at it with a look that said, “One step closer and I’m going to have an early supper,” and I told the dog, “Don’t make me step on you, Taco Bell.” It finally backed off, but never shut up.

In addition, there are other dogs added to the mix. From their back yard I often hear a deep, bellowing bark, coming from some sort of hound dog. And lately, in addition to the escaped Chihuahua, there is often another small dog in front of their house, tied to a bush, trailer-park style. That’s really going to help property values.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully they’ll fix it so the Chihuahuas can’t get out of the fence, or maybe they’ll keep them in the house, or maybe they’ll just run away. I just hope I don’t get one of them on my shoe.