First Post = First Post About Poop

One of the many reasons for buying a house was to finally have a yard where the dogs could run and play and, most importantly, do their business without us needing to put on pants and go with them. And the new house serves these purposes well, although the dogs have developed a habit of barking at any noise that strikes their sensitive ears, as well as any stray figure that happens to enter their fields of vision. We do our best to be good neighbors, though, cleaning up after them and trying to keep them quiet, pulling them inside when they start to bark.

Tara left yesterday after work to spend the weekend with her parents, so last night I was alone, staying up late, playing video games, and listening to all the music that she dislikes. I slept in this morning, and when I finally took the dogs out, I was greeted in the yard by a series of four or five small piles of what turned out to be kitty litter, each serving as a sort of burial mound for a pile of poop. I quickly ran through a mental list of suspects, and quickly ruled out everyone but our neighbors. I tried to think of a proper response to this action. I didn't want to just go and clean it right up. I thought about grabbing Tara's guns and cleaning them on the patio table, but we don't have any cleaner and I don't have any idea how to clean a gun. I thought about standing next to their house and yelling "Cowards!"*. In the end, I just sat in my chair waiting for them to come out. Quickly, my neighbor came over and semi-apologized, saying he had thought we were out of town and that the smell was too much. I politely acknowledged his reasons, reminding him that we clean it up daily, but that it accumulates at a disturbing rate (seriously, these dogs each dump a good pile about 3 times a day). After that he left. I waited a bit, then cleaned it up.

It was after all of this, as I looked at my yard with the now-flattened piles of kitty litter, that I realized how aggressive my neighbor's actions were. I wasn't lying when I said we clean it up daily, so this was really just a day's worth of poop. If that is bothering him, then it seems like our yard must bother him constantly, which serves to explain why he thought it was necessary for such an action. But while he thought we were out of town, he still chose to pour litter on the piles rather than just clean them up. Now, even after picking up all of the poop, I'm left with kitty litter in my yard. If we were really out of town, that would mean the number of piles wouldn't be increasing, so why not just pick it all up and be down with it? That would have made me feel guilty, whereas now I just think it was kind of a dick move because I'm stuck trying to figure out a way of separating litter from grass, or having to deal with having a spotted lawn. I have half a mind to go over and say "I cleaned up the poop, you guys can come over whenever to get your kitty litter back."





*But getting the proper effect would involve rigging a hose simulate a torrential downpour, and all that preparation would go against the spontaneous nature I was aiming for.